


Revelations

by astolat



Series: Thor works [7]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-04
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:43:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 58,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Thor fell, everything trembled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [启示录](https://archiveofourown.org/works/420157) by [fishshell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishshell/pseuds/fishshell)
  * Translation into Italiano available: [Rivelazioni](https://archiveofourown.org/works/848059) by [Neve83](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neve83/pseuds/Neve83)



When Thor fell, everything trembled. The shockwave came up through the air and made Tony's course wobble: that was why he looked down. "Thor's down," Steve's voice came over the comm, calm. Tony could see Natasha running towards the impact crater, and Steve was in defensive position in front of it, shield ready. He should've gotten back to the fight then and there: Doom's second wave of magic-enhanced super-soldiers was still coming, and even though Thor had taken out the miniature Death Star, as Tony had dubbed it, there were plenty of smaller flying guns in the air. 

Tony didn't know at first what it was that made him pause. Thor was knocked flat, that was all. Nothing that didn't happen once in a while, even to your friendly neighborhood demigod. He was lying pretty still, but okay, he'd taken a hard knock—he'd be fine—

Then he realized that he'd seen, out of the corner of his eye, that Loki had stopped fighting. He'd been tangling with a few tanks, some ground troops Clint was backing; all of a sudden he wasn't moving, looking over at where Thor had hit the ground. A shell landed at his feet, blew: the explosion seemed to just float through his body, as though he'd phased out of space, and when it passed he was still just standing there. 

"Guys," Tony said over the comm, "Thor is down." 

"Yeah, I said—" Steve said. 

"No," Tony said, "I mean, Thor is _down_." And he turned and shot down to the impact crater. 

Natasha was leaning over Thor's body saying, "Thor—come on, Thor, Midgard is calling," and pinching his earlobe between her thumb and fingernail. Tony hated that. She looked up when he landed and shook her head, brief; there was an anxious furrow between her eyes. That was never a good sign. "He's not breathing," she said. 

"Okay, back up," Tony said. "Jarvis, I need some juice to the gloves, we're going to do a little high-powered CPR here—" 

Natasha's gasp warned him; she flipped back for some distance, guns already clearing her holsters, and Tony whirled and raised his hands defensively. Loki was standing on the edge of the impact crater, staring down at Thor. Tony braced for impact, for attack; Loki didn't even look at him. He stood on the edge for another moment and then stepped down, slowly, one step after another like he was walking somewhere he didn't want to go. Tony backed cautiously away from him, trying to decide whether to pull the trigger—starting a firefight over Thor's unconscious body didn't seem like the best idea if he could avoid it. 

Loki got to Thor's side, and then he got down on one knee, and then on the other, and stared down at him. "Thor," he said, after a moment. Tony shot a look to Natasha, who had both guns leveled at Loki's head. She looked back and shook her head a little bit: bafflement, uncertainty. 

"Thor," Loki said, louder, and fast as a striking snake he was reaching out, both hands on Thor's chest, and a sudden pulse of light went through his hands: the ground thumped. Tony staggered back and shot forward as soon as he got his footing back: goddammit, what the hell had he been thinking, letting Loki get—

He stopped. Loki had his hands braced on Thor's chest. "Thor!" he snarled; the pulse hit again, and Thor's body jerked, and stayed still, and Loki pulled back away from him and got staggering up to his feet. His eyes never left Thor's face. Thor's eyes were closed, and there was a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. 

There was a crunch up above. Tony looked up: Doom himself was standing on the edge of the crater. "Is he dead?" his hollow voice came echoing from behind the mask. "Excellent. We have the advantage, then." He turned and said to someone behind him, "Send in the third wave." 

Shit. Third wave? "Cap," Tony said. 

"I heard," Steve said over the comm. He sounded stunned. "Is Thor really—"

"Doesn't look great," Tony said. "Won't look any better if we let them overrun us." 

"Loki," Doom said, turning back. "We will need you at the left flank—the Hulk still represents a threat." 

Loki didn't move at first. Then he looked up at Doom blinking like he'd just woken up. "Loki," Doom prodded. 

Loki blinked again. Then he said, "May all the work of my hands on this field be accursed and undone." Tony had to take a second to parse it: his tone sounded like he'd said hey, how about those Yankees. Then all of a sudden there were screams and explosions and thunder coming from behind Doom's back, and when Tony shot up a few feet to look past the lip of the crater, he saw the entire wave of super-soldiers collapsing in their gear, which was twisting and contorting around them. The flying guns were falling out of the sky. 

"What have you done!" Doom bellowed, turning back from looking over the field in horror. At least, Tony was betting on horror: Doom's face wasn't what you would call easy to read. "I will—"

"Run," Loki said, still in that same tone. Doom paused. "You have killed my brother," Loki explained, as if that made everything obvious. "Running would be a very good idea." He paused. "Also quite futile," he added. "But you could gain a little time." 

Clint jumped a few smashed tanks and got to the edge of the crater, getting an arrow levelled at Loki. Steve joined him a minute later. Hulk trailed them, looking vaguely disgruntled: he was dragging a half-smashed flying gun behind him in the dirt. "Hulk not smash," he complained. "Gun fall." He threw it casually off to the side; it exploded in a small fireball. "Hulk smash Doom?" 

Doom looked at them all, looked at Loki one more time, and did some basic arithmetic. He pressed a switch on his gauntlet and vanished. Loki didn't move right away. Then he turned back to Thor's body and went over to kneel down next to it again. 

Tony let himself back down to the crater floor. Steve slid down the side; Clint kept his position, shifting a little around the rim to keep his arrow centered on Loki's face. Tony popped his faceplate and looked at Steve, who glanced back and shrugged a little. Loki just knelt there for a moment, and then he reached out and gathered Thor into his arms, dragging him into his lap. Loki's face was still expressionless; his eyes didn't seem to be seeing anything. 

They were all silent a while, watching, and slowly, Tony started to realize he was feeling something. He tried to do a better job these days of staying in touch with his feelings—Pepper made kind of a point of it, especially the whole thing about recognizing his feelings before acting on them—so after a little while he figured out what it was, and oh yeah: he was mad as fucking hell. And now that he knew that, he could act on it. 

"Sorry he's dead, huh?" Tony said, crossing the distance. Loki slowly looked up at him. "Too bad you didn't figure that out in time to actually do anything about it, like for instance not helping Doom launch the death ray that killed him."

"Tony—" Steve said, in an undertone. 

"No," Tony said, shaking off his hand, "— no, Cap, I'm not done. Put him down," he told Loki. "Put him down, now. You haven't got the right to sit there holding on to him. We're going to take him from here. We're his friends. We're the ones who were fighting next to him. You think it makes it okay that you canceled Doom's war on account of being sorry? It doesn't make it anywhere near okay." 

"Tony!" Steve said. 

"Shut the hell up!" He wheeled on Steve. "That bastard did everything but pull the trigger on his own brother, and we're supposed to respect his grief? Screw it." He wheeled back. "Get your hands off him, or I swear to god I will start hitting you with everything I've got, and that includes the Hulk." 

Loki just kept staring at him like he wasn't even hearing what Tony was saying, which pissed him off even more. "Right," Tony said, and raised his hand. 

"Does it surprise you that I'm sorry?" Loki said, curiously. His head tilted like a bird's.

"Yeah," Tony said. "I would have to say that's in defiance of my expectations, seeing how you've tried to kill him at least twenty times since I've known you guys." 

"Yes," Loki said, nodding slightly. "It surprises me as well." He looked down at Thor's body. Then he eased him back to the ground and stood up. "Will you keep guard over him?" 

Tony was about to tell Loki where he could shove the rest of his belated concerns, and then Steve hauled him back, interrupting, and said, "Guard him from what?" 

Loki looked at him. "Asgard will send warriors to take him back," he said. "Don't let them have him." They stared at him, and Loki added patiently, "They'll put him in a ship and burn him." 

"Sounds as good a way to go as any, to me," Tony said. 

"If his body has been destroyed when I bring back his soul, there won't be anywhere for me to put it," Loki said. "A mortal body won't be able to hold it." 

Tony had his mouth open ready to make the next comment as soon as it bubbled to the surface of his brain, which he confidently expected would happen the second Loki finished talking again, but the process got short-circuited by some key parts of that explanation, so it was Natasha who said, slowly, "— you're going to bring his soul _back_?" 

"Well," Loki said, his mouth doing that creepy mirthless smile thing he liked to do just before twisting the knife, which didn't really increase Tony's confidence, "I intend to try." 

Uh. Right. "I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on how?" Tony said. 

"I'll go to Hel and get it," Loki said.

"Thor is not in Hell!" Steve said. 

"I don't mean your puerile notion of endless torment for those who don't worship your deity," Loki said, acid-sharp. "It is merely the realm of the dead." He looked down at Thor. "If I don't return within a month, I won't," he said, and turned. 

Tony opened his mouth again, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. He looked at Steve: were they actually buying this? Also, were they seriously going to let Loki go? Also also, had Loki just claimed there was an afterlife and he could go there? Because that seemed like some kind of news. Steve was gawking at Loki and didn't seem to be about to stop him. 

"Hulk go too!" Hulk said. Loki paused and looked back at him. "Hulk like Thor." 

"We all like Thor," Tony said impatiently, then he paused. Oh, hey, right. "Let's all go," he said.


	2. Natasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha suspected the universe abhorred an excess of competence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with ♥ to gear and Dira for help!

Natasha suspected the universe abhorred an excess of competence. She'd been at the top of her game, one of the best agents alive and possibly without the qualifier, and for a while it had seemed she couldn't make a mistake. Her ops didn't go wrong, she took every secret she hunted, if she ever had to fight she won. So, obviously she'd just been asking to be shoved into a team of superheroes that invariably seemed to end up embroiled in a head-on firefight, and where the _least_ violent member was the one who occasionally turned into a giant green monster and literally tore people to shreds. 

And that every so often operated on a completely different level from the rest of human reality. 

"Going to the _afterlife_ ," she said levelly. "Am I the only person who thinks this might not be the best idea?" What she really wanted to know was why it was even under rational consideration, but she was writing that off as a lost cause. 

"You're not," Clint said. "And I'm not going." 

"Look, Barton—" Tony began, because of course he wanted to go: show Tony a rock and tell him he couldn't to see what was underneath, and he'd immediately start coming up with a plan to get it flipped over just so he could count the earthworms and pillbugs. 

"Forget it," Clint said. "Not for Thor, and sure as hell not for you." He pointed down at Loki with the tip of his arrow; he hadn't packed up the bow. "I wouldn't follow that bastard to the corner store for milk, much less through the gates of Hell, and if you guys are crazy enough to do it, it's been nice knowing you." 

"I grant you, if he'd come to us with this plan, I'd be worried," Tony said. "But it's not like it was his idea for us to join the party."

Natasha rolled her eyes inwardly, where no one could see. As though Loki wasn't more than capable of figuring out a way to sell them on his plan that would have gotten them to volunteer.

She was pretty sure Loki did plan on doing _something_ to get Thor back. She'd seen the look on his face close up, and maybe he was a god or an alien, but that was a look she knew. She'd seen it in the mirror, once or twice. That look would move heaven and earth to bring Thor back, and she'd even buy, as a working hypothesis, that Loki could actually make it happen. 

Trusting that he was telling the truth about how, that he'd get them there, that he'd even try to get them back—no. Not by a long shot.

"Seriously," Tony was saying to Clint, "you really want to let him head off to bring Thor back alone? And if he doesn't make it, knowing maybe we could've made the difference?" 

More to the point, as far as Natasha was concerned, was if he _did_ make it. Loki wanted Thor alive again; that didn't mean he didn't want other things, too. She had no idea whether Loki could do anything to Thor's soul on the way back, but it didn't sound any further beyond the realm of possibility than they were even already talking. A breathing-but-brainwashed Thor would probably suit Loki just fine. Or maybe just an evil one. 

"Save your breath," Clint said. "The answer is no, and it's staying no." 

"Come on, Barton, we're a team," Tony said. 

"Stop arguing with him," Natasha said. "Someone's got to stay behind anyway." They both looked at her, but she kept her eyes locked with Clint while she added, "To make sure nothing happens to Thor's body, until we're safely back with his soul in good working condition." 

And to make sure if they didn't get back, or Thor's soul _wasn't_ in good working condition, that Loki didn't get his hands on Thor's body. Clint's jaw tightened, but he gave her a nod: message received. 

Tony scowled, because he hated whenever anyone came up with a plan that trumped his. "Fine, right, yes," he said grudgingly. "Fine. Take him back to Stark Tower and fend off the funeral procession. We'll send you a postcard or something." 

"Yeah, I'll be watching the mail for that," Clint said, and waited until Tony had stomped away to go and talk to Steve. "Romanov, are you seriously going along with this?" Clint said, softly. "We could talk to Rogers—he's not crazy, maybe he can put a leash on Stark." 

"Someone has to watch Loki," she said, just as soft. "And don't kid yourself. Rogers is going even if all the rest of us stay behind." Clint glanced over at Steve, who was still staring at Loki, his mouth fixed in a straight line while Tony talked in his ear. "Wherever the dead end up, that's where he's going to find everyone he ever loved," she said, and after a moment, Clint nodded. 

"Watch your back," he said, and palmed her a small pack of his explosives while shaking her hand. That was what she liked in a man: no words wasted, and practical assistance. She broke up the pack into two sections and slipped them into her boots on the pretext of adjusting them. 

She slid back down the side of the crater and walked over to Thor's body. Loki was standing by the feet, still looking down at his face. He didn't glance up when she came over, but he said, "I wouldn't have bothered with manipulation, really. I doubt any of you will be of use." 

"Then why haven't you left already?" she said. 

"I could be wrong," Loki said, "and if I'm not, I can always abandon you."

"Good to know you'll have our back," she said, cold. 

He looked at her with a little of his old glitter back. "Would you believe anything else?" He glanced up at Clint with a faint smile. "Do you really think he'll be able to keep me from Thor's body, if I return without you?"

"You've got a track record of underestimating us boring little humans," she said. "Do you want to bet Thor's life that you're not doing it again? I figure that's at least enough incentive to keep you from leaving us behind just for the kicks." 

She didn't wait for Loki to come up with a response—she wanted to leave the thought there, a small grain of irritating sand in the back of his head. "How do we get there, anyway?" she said, changing the subject. 

"We find someplace where the veil is thin," Loki said. "And then I draw it aside." 

It took nine hours in Stark's private jet direct to Naples. They spent the first hour all subtly changing seats, cautiously jockeying for positions that would let them keep the best view of Loki, who'd parked himself in a seat near the middle and was staring off into space. They finally settled down, Tony on the side popping pretzels into his mouth one after another, pretending he wasn't watching Loki out of the corner of his eye; Steve at the front facing backwards, staring Loki directly in the face. Natasha perched herself in the back, on a barstool in arm's reach of several sharp knives and the crated glassware. To universal approval, Bruce had taken himself off to the furthest one of the bedrooms with a couple of Xanax and a "Tony Stark Special," whatever that was, as soon as they'd gotten on board. 

About five minutes after they'd finally settled, Loki stood up. He went behind the bar. He studied the row of bottles, looked up and said brightly, "Anyone care for a cocktail?" 

Tony immediately said, "I don't suppose you can make a Saucy Basil Mule?" because he couldn't possibly leave well enough alone. 

"Can I?" Loki said, poking at the bar fruit on the counter. "Ah, you do have ginger." He threw a handful of strawberries in a cup along with some basil leaves and picked up the piece of ginger. Natasha closed her hand around the knife tucked up behind her back as he started peeling it with the bar knife. "Captain Rogers?"

"Uh," Steve said, jerking his head over; he'd been mouthing _Saucy Basil Mule?_ at Tony. Tony was shrugging back at him.

"Make him a Captain America," Tony said. He looked back at Steve's glare. "What?" 

"You haven't got any decent amaretto," Loki said. He'd shoved the fruit into a mixer and was shaking it with vodka and schnapps. He poured it over ice with one hand and a ginger beer in the other. "DiSaronno's overrated, it's too sweet to make that drink." 

"I'll skip it, thanks anyway," Steve said, while Tony looked vaguely indignant at the maligning of his bar. 

"Hm, you would like something, though," Loki said. "Let me guess—black and white milkshake, two scoops of malt powder. Am I wrong?" Steve opened his mouth and shut it again, looking vaguely freaked out. Loki was already working the blender. "And for you, Agent Romanov—" He reached out to the back of the back, lifted out a narrow bottle of Stolichnaya elit, and put it on the counter with a small shot glass. "— a sealed bottle." 

Natasha let go of the knife hilt and took it. She was fairly certain she was going to want it before the end of the flight. 

"So, uh, where did you learn to mix drinks?" Tony said, cautiously approaching the bar and taking his giant peach-colored strawberry drink. He stared at it. 

"I worked as a bartender in Vegas for a few months, oh—two years ago, I think," Loki said. Lying? Natasha had no idea. She cracked open the vodka and poured herself a shot. Loki put another shot glass on the bar. "One for me as well, if you don't mind." 

"You're a vodka man, huh?" Tony said. "I thought you Asgardian types went for mead." 

Loki smiled, thinly. "I prefer my drinks cold." He touched the shot glass with one finger, and ice went creeping over the sides. He saluted them with it and downed the shot. 

Tony looked at Natasha meaningfully. "No," she said flatly. "I am not going to try matching a god at shots." 

"Oh, come on," Loki said. "Here, the two of you can take turns. Won't you join us, Captain?" He put two more shot glasses on the counter next to his empty and filled all three in a single pour, without a drop hitting the counter. Just as Steve opened his mouth to say no, Loki raised his glass and said, "To my brother!" and threw it back. 

Steve shut his mouth again and reached out and took the shot. 

By the time the plane landed, they were all very, very drunk. Natasha had never seen Steve drunk before. Bruce had to be rousted out of bed, still smiling and zoned out and unreasonably happy. The bed was littered with bits of foil and the wreckage of about twenty pot brownies. The driver of the waiting Hummer limo looked fairly uncertain about them, which Natasha could hardly blame him for. She spent the half-hour of the drive to Lake Avernus lying flat on the floor of the limo with a napkin full of ice over her forehead, trying to sober herself enough to function. 

It wasn't nearly long enough. Tony staggered against her as they came down the rough stone steps, into the ruined amphitheater. There were broken bottles and soda cans all over, and a horrible mephitic stink rolling in off the lake. "Wow," he said. "I am really, really drunk. Why did I get this drunk?" 

"Don't talk to me," Natasha said. She was concentrating on her footing, forcing herself aware of every inch of heel and toe and ground. 

"Wait," Tony said. "My suit. I'm not wearing my suit. Where is it?" 

"You left it on the plane!" Steve said, skidding down two steps and running into the wall. "You left—" He started wagging a finger at Tony. "You. Left. Your. Suit—"

"Shut up!" Tony said, trying to bat away Steve's finger. He kept missing. "I gotta go back." 

"Oh, there's no need for that," Loki said. Natasha tried to whirl, but it was more staggering around in a wide circle. He was standing two steps up behind them, and he was in his armor, a monstrous shape: the sun was behind him, caught between the points of the horns of his helmet, blacking out everything but the outline of his shoulders and the flowing cape. 

He raised his arms, and Natasha stepped back, groping for something—for a knife, for a gun—and as her heel slipped off the last step and she fell backwards into darkness, she suddenly had the crisp-clear memory: the edge of Loki's thumb brushing the rims of the shot glasses, one after another, as he'd put them on the counter.


	3. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a long time falling. About as long as it took a plane to go down, in freezing ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, if you want to know when I update, you can subscribe if you're an AO3 user, or I'll be posting announcements at my lj (http://astolat.livejournal.com) and tumblr (http://astolat.tumblr.com)!

It was a long time falling. About as long as it took a plane to go down, in freezing ocean, and watch the water coming up your legs until everything went dark. It was funny though, because the sensation was the other way around—like feeling coming back into nerves that had been dead a long time. 

He didn't hit the ground, exactly. He started to hit things, but they were small, thin—everything was whipping past him too fast to see, but when he put his hands out to grab he felt leaves and twigs, and little by little the branches got thicker. He still fell and fell, smashing through them, but each one broke his speed a little more, and finally he crashed into one broad branch, managed to twist himself upright, and landed on his feet hard on the next one down. He grabbed onto some of the surrounding branches to steady himself, wobbling, and looked around. All he saw was trees. 

"Hello?" Steve yelled. He put out a hand and froze, staring at it, and the skinny small arm. He looked down at himself, put his hands on his narrow chest. He sighed. "Great." 

"Holy shiiiiii—" he heard a frantic yelling, branches cracking, and Tony went plummeting down past him, voice dopplering away. Steve looked over the edge. The branches kept going, and he couldn't see Tony anymore, but he could see the broken edges of the branches he'd hit on the way down. He started climbing down. 

What was weird was that he could do it. He expected the old familiar struggle for breath, the strain to make his arms and legs do what his heart wanted them to, the knot in his side. They came, all of them, but they didn't stop him. He could keep going, and his body didn't just give out under him. It hurt, but that was okay. He could handle that. 

After about half an hour climbing down, he heard a faint groan below. He dropped a few more branches and saw the ground below him: Tony was sprawled out flat on a bed of green moss, his hands over his face. Steve managed to let himself down. "Stark, you okay?" 

"Actually I needed to be significantly _more_ drunk for that," Tony said, and took his hands off his face and sat up. He stared. "Shit." 

"Yeah," Steve said, looking down at himself. "I get the feeling maybe we should've asked Loki a few more questions." 

"Rogers?" came a faint call, from somewhere up above, and a few minutes later Romanov jumped down next to them. She had a leaf-green smudge across one cheek, and twigs in her hair. She looked at Steve. "My guns are gone," she said after a moment. "So are all my knives. All my gear."

"Wonderful," Tony said. "I'm betting we don't get the big green guy down here, either." 

The ground shook underneath them abruptly, all the branches and leaves trembling, and a loud furious wordless bellow came nearby. 

"Oh, good, I'm wrong," Tony said. 

"You're not wrong," Natasha said, staring, and Steve turned around. Bruce had just pushed through a few branches. He was frozen: he'd heard the same noise they had. 

"I don't understand," he said. 

"This is not a place where the confines of the physical world have meaning," Loki said. They all turned back. He looked as tidy as if he'd just taken an easy stroll through the park, though he'd gotten rid of the helmet. "You and he are separate, even in your world. Why not here?" 

"You know, there are a few other things I'd like to separate," Tony said. "What the hell was the big idea? You could've just said—"

"Drink this, and I'll take you to the underworld?" Loki said, raising an eyebrow, and fine, he had a point. "We don't have time to waste on argument. This isn't a safe place. Let's go collect the monster and get moving." 

"Why isn't there anyone else here?" Steve said. "If this is really the realm of the dead—"

"Oh, there's a long way to go for that," Loki said. "A very long way yet." 

Steve put his head down as they struggled on through the brush. The trees and shrubs were almost impenetrable, close all around, tangling his arms and legs. He was trying not to let himself think about what any of this might mean, not yet. It was a mission. They were going to find Thor, and bring him back. That was it. 

They found the Hulk's path before they found him: a wide swath of destruction smashed through the forest. Tony fell into it through the saplings gratefully and faceplanted on the moss and trampled undergrowth. The rest of them staggered through after him. "Thank God," Tony said, muffled. "Are you sure you couldn't have brought along a couple of machetes?" He pushed himself up slowly.

"Things are difficult to bring here," Loki said. Steve was kind of meanly pleased to see even he was breathing hard, and his cloak had gotten torn by branches. "Those things which have their own truth—Gungnir, Mjolnir. Gifts, sometimes, if given with the right intent. But mere tools? No. What you bring here is only that which you truly possess."

It was a lot easier going, after that, although keeping up with Loki started to be an issue: his long stride ate up the distance. Steve had to push himself, lungs and legs burning, and all of them ended up trotting every now and again just to catch up. "Loki," he said finally, because the pace wasn't sustainable: healthy people could walk fifty miles in a day, even a hundred at a push, but they weren't going to be good for anything after. "Rein it in."

Loki just said coldly over his shoulder, "I didn't let you come along to slow me down." 

"Yeah, well, I don't think you want to meet the Hulk without us," Steve said, "and we can't keep this up. You said it was a long way to go. Is it more than a day's travel?" 

Loki paused a moment, and then he looked around them. Steve had no idea what he was judging by: all around as far as he could see there was tree, tree, tree, bush, and tree. The cover was so impenetrable he couldn't see the sky, and the Hulk's trampled footpath was the only clear view around. "Perhaps three," Loki said finally, grudgingly. "At _this_ pace." 

"Then it's going to be five," Steve said. "Thirty miles in twelve hours is going to be our limit, if you want us in shape to keep going in the morning."

"Excuse me," Tony said, raising a hand. "Are you seriously saying we're going to walk thirty miles a day for five days? On our feet?" 

"If every grunt in the Army can do it, Stark, so can you," Steve said. "At least you're not carrying forty pounds on your back." Then that hit him, and he looked at Loki. "Uh, and do you have some plan of supply, here?" 

"You need nothing, here!" Loki said, flaring. "Nothing but what you think you need."

"Yeah, well, I think I need a pizza and a car," Tony said. 

Steve caught him just before he would have sat down. "Trust me," he said, remembering every minute of the marches, in basic. "It's just worse if you stop."

Bruce wasn't saying anything, but he'd dragged to a stop and was bent double with his hands braced on his knees, breathing hard. 

Loki did slow it down—some. Steve started mentally ticking off miles by counting steps: he'd halt them when they hit thirty, even if they hadn't found the Hulk by then. Natasha walked beside him for a moment, and said quietly, "Don't push yourselves. There's only one way to go, anyway. I'll stay with him."

She lengthened her stride to catch Loki, and Steve belatedly realized, strip them all down, and she'd just gone from being the face card up their sleeve to their big gun. He dragged an arm across his forehead, tiredly, and looked back at Tony and Bruce, and himself. None of them were in bad shape, but -- Tony did a one-hour workout a day, when he didn't cancel the personal trainer on account of boring, and Bruce had never been in combat as himself. No weapons, no armor, no gear. Steve frowned as he trudged along, and wondered what the hell Loki _had_ brought them along for. 

"Are we even going in the right direction?" he heard Natasha ask. "We're just following his trail—are we going to have to backtrack?" 

"No," Loki said. "It's not the quickest path, but we're making better time for the cleared way."

"That seems... lucky," she said. 

"Not really," Loki said. "There's only the right way, and the wrong way. And if he'd gone the wrong way, he would have had to turn back, eventually." 

"Huh?" Steve said, because that made no sense—any direction at all seemed just the same in this crazy forest. But Natasha said suddenly, "Heads up!" and Loki stopped short; Steve forced himself to jog to catch up. 

In the distance, Hulk was sitting up against a couple of bigger trees at the edge of his own trail, slumped, occasionally thumping a thick torn-off branch—maybe a small tree—against the ground, sullenly. Steve glanced at Bruce, who'd staggered up: he was staring at the Hulk, fascinated and looking sort of queasy at the same time. 

After they'd all stared at the Hulk for a while in silence, Tony raised his voice. "Uh, hey there, big guy."

Steve had held off because he'd been wondering all of a sudden what the hell they'd do if the Hulk just came at them, but instead he just looked up at them with a weird expression on his face, which after a moment Steve managed to peg as _miserable_ , and said, "Hulk tired! Hulk alone!"

"Well, we're here now," Steve said cautiously, as they all approached very, very slowly. "We'll keep going together, how's that?"

Hulk tilted his head, apparently considering, and then said, "OK." He clambered back up to his feet.

Steve glanced at Loki, who certainly wasn't trying to outdistance them now; he had a wary eye on the Hulk. Good. "Okay," he said. "So which way are we headed?" 

"The same will do," Loki said after a moment. "In, and down. It doesn't matter very much which way we go first." 

"Uh, what?" Steve said. "In where?" 

"Inward," Loki said. "Towards the trunk." 

"What do you mean?" Steve said. "Which trunk? There's nothing but trunks." He waved an arm around at the trees, and Loki just gave him a look like he was nuts, went over to one of the trees, and scraped away the moss at its base with his bootheel. 

"Trunks?" Loki said, raising his eyebrows, and Steve stared. It wasn't a tree. It was a branch. Sprouting off from... 

He looked down at the mossy floor of the forest, and dropped to his knees. The moss was a few inches thick, but it came away easily, and underneath was the craggy furrowed wood of old tree bark. "What the hell is this place?" Steve said, getting back up to his feet. 

"Where did you think we were?" Loki said. "Has Thor told you nothing of Yggdrasil?" 

"Oh, no," Tony said. "No, no, no." He stomped up to Loki and jabbed a finger at his sternum. "No. Way. I am prepared to believe that there is a place somewhere out there called Asgard. I am prepared to believe you guys are thousands of years old. I am _even_ prepared to believe that Thor, despite being really most sincerely dead, is somewhere that we can get to him and bring him back. But I refuse to accept that the universe is _sitting on a tree_. NO." 

He was yelling by the end of it. Loki was looking down at him with just enough of a smirk to twitch up the corners of his mouth. 

"Big tree?" Hulk said, looking on uncertainly. 

"I don't care!" Tony whirled on him and yelled, finger stabbing Loki's chest some more for punctuation. The Hulk blinked and somehow looked hurt. "This is—we are not living in goddamn fucking Discworld! _There is no tree!_ " 

"Tony," Bruce said, gently, "there—there really is a tree." 

"Actually, there isn't," Loki said. 

" _Thank_ you," Tony said. Then he double-taked, which was about where Steve was, too. "There isn't?" 

Loki muttered something under his breath, shaking his head. "Listen, you idiot mortals, will you try and stop thinking of this as a place upon your own grubby little world? What you see is as much as you can understand." He looked over all of them coldly, his face hard. "Pray we aren't forced to look upon anything you can't."


	4. Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All right," Loki said. "You want me to tell you a true story?"

The leaves and small branches thinned out nearer the trunk, replaced by larger ones sprouting off at sharp angles, each of them carrying their own small forests away into the canopy, and the way grew easier. For others, of course, as well as for them. The mortals trudged on wearily keeping their heads down, and did not see the occasional eyes peering down from the branches above, or the flash of wings below. Loki had not the comforting luxury of ignorance. 

They had nearly come to the border between the day and night of Yggdrasil, where the light filtering through the leaves grew twilight-dim: the moss underfoot was breaking into patches, and faintly glowing lichens and mushrooms sprouted amid the smell of rot. He brought them as near the trunk as he dared: he needed the speed of the open terrain, but too close and they would become easy prey, by the standards of those things which lived in the dark. 

"It's time to start the descent," he said, halting them finally, and studied the ground a while: the surface was irregular, but he thought it fell away quicker to the right. "There," he said finally. "We're closer to the edge in that direction." 

"We need a rest," the Captain said, and Loki suppressed his irritation: he'd deal with that soon enough. 

"Not on the surface of a branch," he said flatly. 

"How about right here, right now," Stark said. He'd already slid down to the ground while Loki had been determining their course. "At least until you give us a better reason than because you said so. We haven't seen anything else around here." 

"That's because you haven't been paying attention," Loki said. 

"Stark," Romanov said quietly, from the back: they all looked at her, "there was something following us for a while in the cover above. I didn't get a clear look. It went away after the Hulk growled at it." 

"Or perhaps some of you have," Loki said, grudgingly. 

"Loki," Steve said, "it would help if you could give us some idea of what we're up against." 

Yes, because he had a decade to waste trying to explain the tangled life of Yggdrasil to the candle-flicker minds of humans, and another trying to calm their terror if ever they understood. Besides, it would have been boring. "Do you imagine that I come here often, Captain?" Loki said. "I know enough to be wary of exposed positions. So do you, for that matter."

Rogers was not enough a fool to ignore that. He turned to hold out a hand to Stark. "Up on your feet, Iron Man."

Stark looked up at him plaintively. "Seriously?" 

"Yeah," the Captain said, with a sigh. "Come on." 

The curve of the branch grew steadily more pronounced, the exposed ridges in the bark offering footholds. Loki led them towards the edge, climbing over and beneath branches, one eye always on the deep dark to their left. "Look, Cap," he heard Stark saying to Rogers, exhaustion thick in his voice, "not that I don't find it deeply humiliating to be the weakest link here, but I'm done." 

"Nest," Hulk said. 

"Yeah," Stark said. "Nesting sounds great." 

Loki paused and turned back. "Where?" 

Hulk pointed: it was difficult to see, through the gloaming, but that was all to the good. "Stay here," Loki said, when they'd clambered over another ridge and peered down at it. The nest was down the side of the branch, past the edge, and tucked into the crook of a pair of branches and beneath a slender young third one: covered by their shadows and one valiantly struggling leaf. Its wood was old and damp with rot, a few gaps in the side where bits had fallen away: promising. 

He leapt down and looked it over more closely. "All right," he said, looking up at their heads peering down at him. "Come down. We'll stop here."

The rest of them climbed down. Rogers walked slowly around the perimeter of the nest, stamping down a foot. "What kind of bird made this?" Banner said, looking up at the top edge of the nest, some ten feet above their heads. 

"Look for yellow feathers," Stark said. He had collapsed flat to the ground and had an arm flung up over his eyes. "Oh, come on," Stark added, when no one answered his thin jibe. "Please tell me one of you got that."

"Oscar the Grouch would be a nearer match," Loki said. "Well?" He looked at the Captain. "Are you satisfied?" 

"Yeah," Rogers said. "Let's make camp, guys. I'm assuming a fire would be a bad idea?" 

"Extremely," Loki said. He turned to the side and climbed up, reaching for a thin stem sprouting off the branch. 

"Hey!" Rogers said. "Where are you going?" 

"To bring you sustenance," Loki said over his shoulder, and swung himself up. "We're never going to get to our destination at this pace." 

"And what if something happens to you out there?"

Loki paused and peered down. Rogers and Romanov and Banner had gathered and were staring up at him expectantly, as though there were any answer to that but the obvious one: _you'll all die_. "Stop fretting," he said. "I wouldn't have bothered bringing you just to abandon you here. I'll return in an hour." 

He pulled himself up the rest of the way to the branch before they could raise any other pointless objections. Without them at his heels to worry about, he could move at real speed: once he was out of sight, he let his boots dissolve and his fingers and toes grow long, and clambered back up into the canopy, going swiftly from branch to branch into the dark, looking down often. 

Just short of impenetrable darkness he found a brackish pool standing in the stump of one great broken branch. He'd already woven a small basket out of twigs and leaves as he went, so it was only a moment to drop down and fill it, then he was back up in the safety of the narrower branches and hurrying back out. 

Closer to the nest he dropped down and brought himself back to his usual shape before walking back to the others. They were all lying huddled in corners of the nest, heads pillowed on arms, only the soldier keeping watch and the Hulk prodding his own toes. "Here," Loki called softly, letting himself cautiously down, and bent to hand the cup into Rogers' reaching grasp. "Don't drop it." 

He dropped down the rest of the way and nudged Stark awake with the toe of his boot; Romanov had rolled up to her feet already, and Rogers woke Banner. "Here," Loki said, taking the basket from Rogers: half the water had spilled, on his way back, but it was still half-full. He handed it to Stark, first. "Take no more than a single swallow." 

"What is this?" Stark said, warily. 

"Dew from the uppermost leaves of Yggdrasil trickles down steadily," Loki said. "There are places where rivulets slowly gather, eventually forming great torrents, and not far from here one that runs a long way, bearing sap from the bark and pollen from the flowers which bloom high above. A swallow will refresh you and infuse you with long-lasting strength. More than that—well, I wouldn't risk it, myself." 

"Huh," Stark said, peering into the cup, and he lifted it and took a swallow. He stood holding it, then shook himself all over, blinking. "Wow. That's something, all right." He turned and held it out to Banner, who peered in doubtfully but then lifted it and drank as well. 

The others drank, and then Rogers turned and cautiously offered it to the Hulk, who peered in. "Water," he said. 

"Yeah," Rogers said. "It's—"

Hulk took the basket and turned it upside down, pouring the dregs down over his nose. He wiped them off and peered into the basket, frowning. "Wet!" He flung it down in a temper, and the basket fell apart. 

"Crap," Stark said, frozen with arms reaching out to stop him before he'd thought better of it. 

"Well," Rogers said after a moment, "he doesn't seem to be thirsty, anyway." 

No, because he wasn't an idiot, Loki managed to restrain himself from saying. "You are already feeling the effects, I imagine," he said, seating himself in a crook of several larger twigs folded together. "But it will be some time before the full efficacy takes hold. Sleep a little longer: when you wake, you will have the strength to continue more swiftly, without pause, for the rest of our journey. I'll keep the watch."

Rogers and Stark and Romanov traded looks: they doubted him, of course. "The Hulk doesn't appear to require rest, either," Loki said. "He'll certainly object if I attempt to do anything to you." 

"Okay," Rogers said to the others, and they all disposed of themselves back to their resting-places and closed their eyes. Soon their breath had deepened into sleep. Loki looked at the Hulk, who scowled back at him ferociously. 

"Hulk not like you," he said. 

"Yes, I know," Loki said. "But you want to save Thor, don't you?" 

Hulk was silent, chewing that over. "Hulk like Thor," he said finally, in grudging agreement.

"Then for now, we are allies," Loki said. "Temporary friends." 

"Temporary," Hulk said. 

"For a little while," Loki clarified. 

"Hrn," Hulk grumbled. "Temporary." He frowned. "When?" 

"Until we have Thor back," Loki said. 

"Thor back," Hulk said. 

"Yes," Loki said, and had to look away as it struck again, sudden and unbearable: Thor was dead. He managed to move his hands into his lap with a natural movement, where he might close them upon each other hard enough for his nails to dig into the flesh. He felt his nails grow longer, talonlike, and welcomed gratefully the hot sharp stab of physical pain, the trickle of blood. 

Hulk was watching him, and he sniffed the air. "Loki hurt?" he said. 

"It doesn't matter," Loki said. 

Hulk scratched his head. "Hulk not care," he decided. 

"No," Loki said. "I don't imagine you do." Only Thor would have been stupid enough, of all of them, to care. "Come, brother, what are you _doing?_ " he would have said, in that sincere simple baffled way of his, which could not imagine the relief of honest pain, honest cruelty; he would have dragged Loki's hands from his own grip and forced them open; he would have tried to make him heal or bandage them. 

Oh, how Loki would have hated him for it, every minute: how he would have hissed at him, and struck away his broad and open hands. Loki shut his eyes; a shudder went through him. How desperately he'd tried to deny this. But Odin had wrought his prison too well. Loki had tried to escape; he'd tried, he'd come to the very gates, and they stood open: Thor was dead. 

Infinite possibility stood in an infinite road, leading away: no one who could stand against him on Midgard, not for long; his parents bereft and at last with no child of their own blood to take precedence in their hearts; even a throne open back in Asgard, if he wanted it. Or he might have fled all of it: found some new world, some new universe perhaps to hold him, secure that no one would follow—no one would seek him out and hunt him down. He could have wrought schemes to make himself whatever future he desired, now he no longer had to fight Thor for the place which they had both been shaped to fill. 

So of course here he was, walking straight to the land of the dead to close the gates again with his own hand. Because he could not stop loving Thor. His shining, beautiful brother: made to be a king, made to be a god, a warrior, a victor; it turned Loki's stomach. How unbearably _trite_ it was to love him. To be one of the adoring throng, one of his bootlickers and hangers-on, accepted and assumed as merely his due. It had been infinitely better to be his enemy, the serpent gnawing at his heart. At least Loki had felt his equal, for a little while: he'd known that Thor thought of him, with pain and sorrow, as he thought of Thor in turn. 

Maybe there would be a way back to that, after. But Loki didn't think so. Thor would never believe the lie again; he scarcely believed now, after Loki's finest efforts. Every attack still put wounded confusion in Thor's eyes, every blow was a surprise to his heart. After this? He'd turn and offer his back to Loki's blades in perfect confidence, and Loki wouldn't be able to strike. Thor was _dead_. The sound of his voice had stilled, his eyes were closed, and Loki couldn't bear it. He'd never be able to risk it again. 

He had no idea what he _would_ do. Maybe Thor would let him go, let him flee away into some far corner of the universe? At least for a little while, a century or two while he played with his beloved mortals? But the leash would still be there, invisible. 

Loki shuddered away from it and looked up. Hulk was breaking twigs into many pieces, frowning at them in concentration. "Shall I tell you a story?" Loki said. Hulk looked up at him expectantly. Loki looked around and pointed. "Do you see that fruit, over there—it's far away. Yes, there, on the fourth branch up." 

"Planet," Hulk said, after a squint. 

"Yes," Loki said. "That is the dark world of Mor on the edge of Yggdrasil's night, where the Vallen-Ri reign. They have a great tower by the sea, which every year the kings build a little higher. Every lord brings them with their yearly tribute a single brick into which they have laid a great treasure from their demesne, and the king taking these climbs to the top with a supply train of servants following him, to lay each one down with a mortar made of pearls and milk. 

"The tower has grown so wide and so high that now a new king is crowned every year, for the one who goes aloft will not return in his lifetime; indeed the kings who go take a bride with them, and let their sons complete the journey. There are cities built within the tower, and wars take place between them, now and again. 

"The story I will tell you is of two of these cities: Wir of the Eastern Wall, and Upper Kavana—" 

Hulk's forehead had been furrowing deeper as Loki spoke, and abruptly he broke in. "Lies!" 

"It's a story," Loki said. 

"Not true!" the Hulk said. 

Loki shrugged. "All things are true, somewhere and in their own way."

"Lies." Hulk scowled at him. "Story." 

"All right," Loki said. "You want me to tell you a true story?" 

"OK," Hulk said. 

"There was once a woman named Avirna. She wove baskets for her living, not particularly well but well enough. On warm days, she would leave the market early to have a bath in her small yard. She would fetch a bucket of water and fill it at the well, and pour it in the tub. She would fetch a second bucket of water and fill it at the well, and pour that into the tub. She would fetch a third bucket of water and fill it at the well, and pour _that_ into the tub."

"Three!" Hulk said. 

"Yes," Loki said. "Three buckets so far." 

"More," Hulk said. 

Stark woke first. He sat up and rubbed his hands down his face and slapped his own cheeks. "Okay, that stuff could put hair on your chest. What are you guys talking about?" 

"Buckets," Hulk said. 

"Yeah, I got the buckets, what are we doing with five hundred and sixty-two buckets?" Stark said. 

"It's not important," Loki said, standing up. "Wake the others." 

"More story," Hulk said, his brows gathering stormily. 

"What about a song, instead?" Loki said. "Stay close and I'll sing you the Lament for the Old Year of Alfheim as we climb down." 

"OK," Hulk said, after some consideration. 

"Good," Loki said, and turned to see the others getting up, their eyes bright. Now perhaps they'd get somewhere. 

"I could walk for a month, the way I feel," Rogers said to Romanov. Loki smiled, thinly.


	5. Bruce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was better not to think about that. It was better not to let himself wonder what might happen, if—if they—

"You're pretty quiet," Tony said. 

"Am I?" said Bruce, reaching for another springy branch. They were the best way to go: let it bend as much as it could, lowering you down, and stretch out for the next one just in reach. Drop to that branch. Rinse and repeat. He assumed they were getting closer to the ground because they were going in the direction of gravity, but so far there wasn't a whole lot of other evidence to back it up.

The Hulk was in the lead far below, with Loki. Faintly the sound of singing floated up, every so often, to guide the rest of them. That and the giant gaping holes with smashed branches and torn leaves. Bruce was glad. This way he didn't need to see—him. He could forget that his body was his own again for now. 

It was better not to think about that. It was better not to let himself wonder what might happen, if—if they—

If they left the Hulk behind, down here—

Terrible privilege, Tony had called it once. Without the Hulk, how many of the Avengers' battles would have been won? Bruce had stopped even thinking about a way to end it, lately. He'd told himself he'd made peace with the burden. He had real work again. Friends again. Even a home, although Stark Tower was more like a really weird, really pointy sleepaway camp. There were people around him who weren't terrified of him, who could corral him if they had to. Things were okay. He'd told himself he was fine. 

He grabbed another branch, and rode it down through the air to another branch, wide enough to stand on. Tony came dropping down after him. 

"So, listen," Tony said, "is it just me, or is Hulk suddenly all buddy-buddy with our pal Loki?" 

"I hadn't noticed," Bruce said. He cocked his head. Another song was wafting up. "He's got a pretty good singing voice, I guess." 

"Great," Tony said. "I'll keep it in mind when we're casting the next Asgard's Got Talent. Right now I'm a little more concerned with his agenda." 

"What do you want me to say?" Bruce said. "I haven't got any special insight, Tony."

"The guy lives inside your head," Tony said. "And you live inside his."

"I don't," Bruce said. "When the Hulk comes out, I—go away. I'm not there." He waved a hand towards the gaping hole. "Don't you get it? This place—it reveals what's true about us. Loki's not lying about that. Hulk and I are just—sharing the same living space."

"Okay," Tony said. "Then let's consider the exciting implications of Loki becoming the Hulk's good pal while you're not in range to interfere."

Bruce shrugged. "He can try if he wants to," he said quietly. "I don't think the Hulk really has friends."

They stopped and regrouped briefly after several hours of climbing. A few branches down, Loki had walked some distance back out into the brighter area and was peering down, maybe trying to judge the distance. Bruce slowly, unwillingly, looked over at the Hulk. Hulk was down on the same branch watching Loki, murmuring to himself under his breath—something that sounded like the song, Bruce realized. 

"Yeah," Steve said to Tony in a low voice, sounding grim. "I see what you mean."

"It makes sense," Natasha said, and they looked at her. "He knew we wouldn't have our powers, our weapons. Why would he bring us down here? To get the Hulk."

"I also point out," Tony said, "that we all had a really nice long nap after Loki handed us that drink of the magic water. Maybe there was something else in it." 

Bruce sighed and said, "It wasn't magic water." 

"What?" Tony looked at him. 

Bruce shrugged. "I could be wrong," he said, "but I'm pretty sure it was just water." 

Tony raised his eyebrows and spread his arms. "We have just climbed the equivalent of Mount Everest in tree branches in less than a day, and you think it was just water?"

"Placebo effect," Bruce said. They stared at him. "This place is a—a metaphor, right? We're not traveling in physical space. If you're tired, it's because you think you're tired. So—" 

"He handed us a cup of water and told us it was an energy drink, and we believed it," Natasha finished. "So it worked." 

"Holy shit, he pulled a Dumbo on us," Tony said, indignantly, before waving it away. "Okay, okay, not the point right now. How do we split up Laurel and Hardy before they ditch us for real?" 

"Well," Steve said, "I guess we could talk to... Hulk..." He trailed off. They all looked at each other. 

"We could follow them a lot more closely," Natasha said. 

"I don't know about you, but I'm going as fast as I can," Tony said. 

"No, you're not," Natasha said. "You're going as fast as you _think_ you can." 

Tony opened his mouth and closed it again and frowned. "How am I supposed to think I can go faster?" he complained. 

Bruce looked up. There was a small leaf danging off the branch overhead; he reached up and picked it. He ceremoniously handed it to Tony. "So long as you carry this leaf you can go twice as fast as you could before."

"Very funny," Tony said. 

"No, I'm serious," Bruce said. "The placebo effect is real even in our world. Down here? It's even more powerful." He nodded at the leaf. "I'm pretty sure you really can use that to go faster." 

"You just handed me a _leaf_ ," Tony said. 

"Loki gave you a drink of water," Bruce said. "You like him more than me or something?" 

"This is the worst place I have ever been in my entire life," Tony said. 

They started keeping up a lot better, after that: Loki and the Hulk stayed in view, and Natasha and Steve managed to stick directly on them almost all the time. Tony was still having trouble, probably because he _wanted_ to be having trouble, and Bruce was privately glad: it gave him an excuse for hanging back, too. 

He started thinking about it some more as they kept going, though. Why couldn't they go even faster than this? Why not—wings? Well, wings might not actually be that great; the leaves were thick enough that it would be flying half-blind, and they'd catch on branches. A tail? They probably had those good old primate instincts to work with, somewhere in the back corners of their brains. Longer toes, a prehensile tail—he started designing the ideal form in his mind as they kept scrambling along. 

"Hey," he said to Tony, "I'm going to try something. Don't freak out." 

Tony darted a look at him as they jumped down. "Allow me to say, that is a deeply discomfiting thing to hear from you." 

Bruce grinned at him wryly, and then he decided he had feet like he'd imagined. They were wide, splayed out, more like palms than feet. The toes were as long and agile as his fingers, and the big toe was an opposable thumb. He could reach it out and close it around that branch below, and he did just that: he felt the smooth bark under his gripping toes, holding on. He could just let go of his current branch. 

He let go and swung, easily; he was dangling upside down with his arms free. 

"Holy shit!" Tony said, staring. Bruce looked up towards him—and saw his own feet, which were of course his feet, perfectly normal feet that couldn't hold on to a branch, and suddenly he was falling wildly through the air. 

He windmilled his arms frantically, trying to grab, but he was already falling fast: the branches and leaves were whipping through his hands. He had a brief glimpse of the others, the Hulk turning his head to look at him, and wondered suddenly what would happen if _he_ got left behind instead—if he died down here, would he be setting the Hulk loose full-time on a fragile and vulnerable world—

He tried to think of wings, tried to imagine he had wings, but it wasn't working: he couldn't _believe_ in them while he was falling head over ankles, and then he struck against the surface of a narrow branch, bounced off at an angle, fell another few feet and hit again: there was something like ground underfoot and he grabbed on for dear life, and finally stopped. He stood there panting for a moment before he realized he was standing on a huge branch, maybe even as wide as the first one they'd thought was the ground, and he was holding on to a tall narrow branch sprouting straight up from a thick dark layer of rotting leaves. 

And there was an ant in front of him. 

Bruce stared at it. Their heads were about level with each other. The ant wiggled its jointed antennae in his direction. He tried to remember their function. Detection of—vibrations, he thought? Chemicals, also. He was sweating—it could probably pick up his fear and stress, although maybe it wouldn't interpret them as such. It clacked its mandibles. 

"Bruce!" he heard a yell faintly from above. "Bruce!" 

He remembered absolutely nothing about ant hearing. "Hey!" he yelled back up, taking a chance. "I'm okay, I've just got—company." 

Tony came shooting straight downward through the trees, not touching a single branch, and slammed into the ground next to him feet first, bits of dead leaves flying into the air, and the surface trembling. He straightened up and dusted himself off. "How do you like that?" Bruce blinked at him. "Hey, I can be taught," Tony said. He spotted the ant. "Oh, you are not pretty." 

The ant backed up a few steps. 

"That might not have been the best idea," Bruce said. 

"What, you think I hurt its feelings?" Tony said. 

"No, the landing, the vibrations," Bruce said. "It might think we're looking to attack." 

Tony held out his hands. "We come in peace, giant ugly bug," he said. "Feel free to take off." 

The ant backed up again and clacked its mandibles some more. Another ant head poked out suddenly from under a pile of dead leaves. It crawled out to join the first one. 

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Bruce said. 

Two more ants poked out from behind other branches. 

"Yeah," Tony said, darting his eyes to one side and another. More ants were appearing on all sides. "Guys!" he yelled. "Guys? A little help!" 

"Get back up here!" Natasha said, from the narrow branch above, and dropped herself hanging from her knees to offer them her hands. Bruce looked up and swallowed. "I think you're better off down here, actually," he said. There were ants crawling out along the branch towards her, mandibles working. 

She took one look and unhooked her knees, somersaulting to the ground beside them. "Well, shit," she said. She grabbed up a fallen branch from underneath a bunch of leaves. More ants were gathering all around. 

Steve jumped down next to them, already holding a big piece of bark like a crusader's shield. "Okay, people, back to back," he said. "Bruce, Tony, arm yourselves. We're going to back away towards the trunk together. If most things are scared of the dark area, that's probably our best bet for throwing these guys off." 

"Not a bad idea," Loki said, from above their heads, and they all looked up, "except they're one of the things living in the dark that everyone is afraid of." 

He was standing three branches above, balancing easily. A few of the ants swiveled their heads up towards him, but they weren't on his branch: he could probably get back up and away, Bruce realized. "Let me guess," Steve said, looking up at him. "This is where you take off, tell the Hulk we got lost, and leave us all behind to be ant food." 

Loki smiled. "Also not a bad idea," he said. And then he jumped down and landed before them in the middle of the circle of ants. 

He turned to face the nearest ants, spreading his arms wide, his cloak broad and dramatically sweeping. "I am Loki of Asgard," he said. "I am not without power." He began to pace around the circle, keeping his smile and eyes on the ants. "You may have the strength to overcome me and my companions," he continued, "but we are not easy prey. Many of your warriors will fall. Your colony will be weakened by the struggle, and made vulnerable to your neighbors. Is a little meat worth the risk?

"Consider also," he added, turning, raising a hand—Bruce had to admit, the guy was good. He could play Richard III anytime—"that we are no threat. We are on a journey, and will soon have left your territory. Perhaps one of your neighbors will make the same mistake which you can avoid, and leave themselves vulnerable instead to you." 

He'd finished making the circuit. He spread his hands, backing away towards their tense knot in the middle. "Choose," Loki said. 

The ants turned to one another, touching antennae, clacking mandibles; a faint sweet smell was rising into the air. "Pheromones," Bruce said, low, seeing Natasha take a sniff, frowning. "They're talking it over." 

One of the ants abruptly disengaged from the circle and stepped forward towards Loki. It paused. Loki inclined his head. "So be it," he said, and he lunged forward and seized its mandibles in his hands. A creeping white coat of frost rushed away over its head, and a coat of ice following in its wake; in moments the ant's head was enveloped. Loki whirled around and struck it with his closed fist, and the head shattered into pieces. Its body tumbled at his feet, legs twitching. 

"Great," Steve said. "Get ready—" 

But the ants were backing away, leaving, in ones and twos. In moments they were alone again with the dead ant, and the one Bruce had seen originally, which went back to tearing leaves off the standing branch and tucking them away into its mouth, as if they weren't even there. "What, they wanted to see what you'd got?" Tony said to Loki. 

"Naturally," Loki said. 

"And they just—tossed one of their guys away to find out?" Steve said, staring down at the corpse. 

Loki shrugged. "A reasonable trade on their part," he said. "We're a rich banquet to them. Not something they'd care to pass up for no reason." He looked up as Hulk came jumping down from above. 

"No smash?" Hulk said. 

"No, no smash," Loki said. "Maybe later, though." He looked around. "We'll have to stay closer together from now on. Soon we'll have to turn into the dark." 

"How long is it going to take to get off this branch?" Bruce said. Loki looked at him, eyebrow raised, and Bruce huffed a laugh. "Oh, I get it."

"You do?" Tony said. 

"This isn't a branch," Loki said. "We've reached the ground."

"Of course we have," Tony said. 

The ground was soft and spongy. Bruce paused at one point and dug down into it, but he didn't get to anything different even at the full depth of his arm, just leaves at different stages of rot and a mess of tangled thin white rootlets. Every once in a while they hit a bigger one, contorted and poking up, sometimes over their heads, and had to scale it or go around. 

Loki kept singing for the Hulk softly as they led the way. Bruce kept his head down and trudged on behind them. The song wasn't in any language Bruce knew, but he somehow understood it anyway, although that didn't make any sense: it was all about the sun and the moon, rising and falling, and the end of a year and the end of all things. It didn't seem to rhyme, but it had a steady lulling rhythm, and the walking was easier than climbing down, more monotonous. 

The whole thing was vaguely hypnotic. Every time it crept up his neck, Bruce squeezed his eyes shut, deliberately stubbed a toe, shook it off. He'd tried hypnosis early on. The first couple of sessions had gone well. He'd gone weeks without an incident, it had been easier to keep a lid on it. Then he'd woken up after the third session in the middle of a swath of wreckage, and newspaper headlines following him with a death toll in the hundreds. He'd avoided it since then. 

Of course, he realized belatedly, that wasn't an issue right now. He raised his head and looked at the Hulk's bulk up ahead, a huge looming shadow. They had come far into the dark while he'd been staring at the ground: it was hard to see. He glanced back over his shoulder. Tony and Steve were behind him, Natasha was bringing up the rear, all their eyes unfocused. He looked ahead. "Loki," he said quietly, and the song stopped: he saw Loki's head turn in profile, his eye a glint in the dark, though he kept walking. "I get the feeling this is important, but I don't trust you enough to just let it ride. Can you tell me what you're doing?" 

Loki was silent a moment. "Not in any way you can comprehend," he said finally. He was keeping his voice soft. "You might say I'm protecting your minds by giving you something else to focus on, a way to ignore what else is in the dark." 

"I might," Bruce said. "Would that actually have anything to do with what you're doing?"

There was a ghost of a movement, maybe something like a smile. "Very little." 

"Can you explain it in math?" Bruce said. "I'm good at math." 

"What's between the square root of negative seven and seventy-three times pi?" Loki said. 

"That makes no sense," Bruce said. 

Loki shrugged. "You're not that good at math." He paused. "If it's any consolation, Thor probably couldn't answer that one either." 

"He's never seemed that much of a science guy, to me," Bruce said. 

"Of course not," Loki said. There was a faint mocking sneer in his voice. "Seith is for women, and old men." 

"Seith?" Bruce said. "Magic, you mean?" 

"Magic, science," Loki said. "It's all the same in the end. Not an art for warriors." 

That wasn't a chip on his shoulder or anything. Bruce looked back at the others. They'd kept walking along, still with those dreamy looks on their faces. "Okay," he said. "Let's try something else. Why did you bring us? We've just been slowing you down. As far as I can tell, not even the Hulk has been that useful. Give me a reason to believe you really need us along." 

"You need more than the obvious truth I could have thrown you all off before now, if I'd wanted?" Loki said. 

"That's something," Bruce said, "but you like messing with people. I can imagine a bunch of reasons why you'd want to ditch us someplace specific, and most of them aren't nice. I'm having a harder time figuring out why you'd want a bunch of mortals along."

Loki stopped and turned to face him. The little light showed faintly his eyes, the line of his mouth, his jaw. He said softly, "For your dead, of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♥ to you all for the awesome fb and I also add, suggestions/rambling about where you think the story might be going are totally welcome! I do have the whole skeleton plotted out now in my head, but there is always room for adjusting and it is heaps of fun to see what people are thinking! :D


	6. Hulk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OK," Hulk says. Thor nice. "Where Thor?" 
> 
> "In the land of the dead," Loki says. "That's where we're going."
> 
> "Go there now," Hulk says. 
> 
> "I'm working on it," Loki says.

Floor mushy here. Dark. Branch hit Hulk face. Hulk not like. Hulk smash branch! Branch break. Broken. Hulk smash again? Branch fall down. Broken. No good. 

Want see big tree again. 

"Big tree," Hulk says. 

"We're underneath it," Loki says. "Under the branches of the tree." 

"Under big tree," Hulk says. Hulk like big tree. "On big tree?"

"We'll climb back up when we return," Loki says. "With Thor."

"OK," Hulk says. Thor nice. "Where Thor?" 

"In the land of the dead," Loki says. "That's where we're going."

"Go there now," Hulk says. 

"I'm working on it," Loki says. 

Loki _not_ nice. But Loki tell story. "Story?" Hulk says. 

"A little later," Loki says. 

"Sing?" Hulk says. 

"When we're out of the dark," Loki says. OK. 

Hulk walk. Still dark. "Sing?" Hulk says. 

"Can you try and sleep like the others?" Loki says. 

Hulk sleep all time. Sleep, sleep, sleep. "Hulk not tired!" 

"Not sleeping, exactly," Loki says. Loki talking fast. "Dreaming." Loki point.

Hulk look. Everybody walking. Captain look funny. Tony Stark look funny. Natasha look funny. Other guy look funny. "Dreaming?" Hulk says. Hulk poke other guy. Other guy fall down. Splat! Ha ha. Hulk pick other guy up. Mud on face. Ha ha. Hulk put other guy on feet. Other guy keep walking. Hulk poke other guy. Other guy fall down. Ha ha ha ha. 

"I can't deny there's a certain amusement to it," Loki says, "but let's try not to hurt them."

"Hulk no hurt friend," Hulk says. "Hulk no hurt here." Big tree nice. No hurt if not WANT.

Loki says, "Well, that's true. All right, enjoy yourself." Hulk put other guy back on feet. Hulk poke Tony Stark. Hulk poke Tony Stark from BACK. Tony Stark splat! Ha ha haha. 

OK. Hulk bored. "Sing?" Hulk ask. Hulk put Tony Stark back on feet. Everybody walking again. 

"Dreaming," Loki says. "Try and dream, like them. Close your eyes and think of something pleasant." 

"Dreaming," Hulk says. Hulk close eyes. Hulk think of story. Hulk think of tree. Hulk think of friends. Hulk dream.


	7. Clint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is not going to be my favorite day ever," Clint said, crouching in the truck bed, panting.

There had been nine different SHIELD agents, three flying snoopers, and at least seven different micro-cams under Jarvis's control, all locked on the team. Clint had personally had an eye on twelve of the video feeds at the same time, watching Natasha picking her way down through the crumbling temple, steps covered in trash and broken bottles. He'd even flipped on the intercom getting ready to tell Fury to pull the plug, because no way had she deliberately decided to get drunk and party with Loki. 

And that was when he'd registered they were gone. No giant puff of smoke, no special effects, no fade-out; they'd just somehow stopped being there, and he'd gone on watching for almost thirty seconds before his brain had clued in. 

He'd rewound the video a dozen times, and each time he watched it, even if he went frame-by-frame, the same goddamn thing happened. He couldn't find the moment when they were gone. They were there, and then they were gone, and the line was too blurred to see. It pissed him the hell off, not least because he couldn't help wondering—if he'd gone, if he could've tipped the scales—

Well, he hadn't, so now he had a job to do out here, and it sure wasn't the one Loki had given him. He glanced into the bed of the truck as the sheet covering Thor's body began to billow and snap in the rising wind. He took a quick look out over the New Mexico desert and pressed his earpiece. "You getting anything over there?" 

"Yes, sir," the spotter's voice came back. "Wind's at 40 miles per hour and rising, and we're getting disturbances in the stratosphere." 

"Okay. Look sharp, everyone," Clint said. "Watch for my mark." He slid his sunglasses on as the wind started to pick up sand to rattle against the sides of the truck and sting lightly on the exposed skin of his arms. 

He had a great view of the show when it finally hit: his stomach tightened, visceral, as the long curling funnel of the twister reached down to the ground, grey as storm clouds and chased all over with green lightning. When it touched, the flare of light stung his eyes; the wind blew one last ferocious wail and a _thump_ shook the ground. The wind died almost immediately, and he banged on the side of the truck bed. The driver swung them in a circle and headed for the site. There were still rogue gusts of wind throwing curls of sand around the smoking symbol on the ground, and the air smelled like the salt of an ocean that the New Mexico desert hadn't seen in millions of years. 

There were thirteen of them. Clint recognized the woman in the lead the second he saw her. He'd busted seventeen arrows on the Destroyer from cover, none of them even getting the damn thing to turn its head around, before she'd shown up and taken a run at it. She had dark hair; all the other women behind her were blond, and also six feet tall minimum. Jumping off the back of the truck and walking to meet them, Clint almost looked for Tony to make sure someone was ready to kick him before he made the inevitable remark about the view at eye level. 

"Lady Sif, unless I'm mistaken," he said, stopping in the dust before them. He held his bow casually in his left hand, just hanging out, no real threat; his arrow, held nocked, was black against the black of his uniform. 

She halted the troop and looked down at him. "I would greet you, Clint Barton," she said, low and cold; her eyes were wet, "but I have no courtesy in my heart to offer: you and yours have been no friends to Asgard or to Thor. You will deliver his body to us now, that I may bear it home for mourning." 

"Yeah, about that—" Clint said. 

"Save your breath," she said, and a sword was all of a sudden out with the point at his throat, almost faster than he'd been able to follow; it took a serious effort not to flinch. "You have naught to say which I wish to hear, and what comfort you would try to offer would be cold indeed. Hlokk, Olrun, go and bear our prince from that metal chariot." 

"My lady," they said, and stepped out of rank and started for the truck. 

"Initiate," Clint said into his earpiece, and dropped to the ground shooting the arrow as he fell, after the two women. The arrowhead sank into the ground just in front of their feet. He rolled and tossed the target to the back of the troop: as soon as it hit, the payload on the arrow deployed, the cable arcing back over the heads of the Asgardians to connect with the target. The net burst over them, gleaming sticky in the sun, and Clint ran for the truck, flat out, while they started to hack at the webbing.

The driver was already rolling by the time he threw himself in the bed. "Go!" Clint yelled, and they floored it straight out over the desert, thick dust clouds rising in their wake. 

He'd already started his stopwatch going: he'd hoped for nine minutes; he'd banked on seven. He didn't think he was going to get them: he'd seen Sif's blade starting to carve through the netting out of the corner of his eye, while he'd been running. "In case R&D was wondering," he said into his earpiece, "no, they _haven't_ got Spiderman's formula nailed yet. We need to carve two minutes off our time. Everyone, maintain speed: we're going to rendezvous in motion. Team Bravo, you're up. Get on my six and get me a distraction, and I won't complain if you kick up some more dust while you're at it."

"Roger that, sir," the crackle came back, and thirty seconds later the Humvee came swerving out messily across the truck's trail, swinging back and forth. Behind them Clint saw dark shapes coming through the dust, running faster than anyone should ever have been able to: a glint of light on metal. 

He nocked and fired, nocked and fired, and saw explosions of blue crackling electricity flare distantly when the arrows hit. They were opening up some distance, and Team Bravo were lobbing micro-grenades in every direction: he couldn't see the Humvee anymore through the dust. Thirty seconds. Forty. Fif— Red and yellow fire bloomed out of the dust, and a spinning tire came flying through the air, not fast enough to catch up: he watched it hit the ground and roll away smoking, vanishing back into the dust cloud. 

"Shit," he said, comprehensively. "Team Bravo, give me the good word." He grabbed on to the cab of the truck and stood up. The other truck was pulling even with them, and Team Charlie was on their other side. He looked forward over the truck roof and could see the SHIELD compound growing up out of the desert. 

"Bravo Leader here," came over the line. "We're fine, sir, they just cut the whole fucking undercarriage out from under us with goddamn fucking swords, sir, over. Sorry we couldn't buy you more time, sir." 

"Copy that," Clint said, and showed the drivers the thumbs-up through the window. The trucks started to accelerate. He pulled six arrows at once, all the rest of his scatter-fire explosives, and fired them into the dirt. 

Sif and the rest of the team came exploding out of the dust cloud seventy-nine seconds later, blazing: the sun was throwing reflections off their armor, and their streaming hair looked like it was on fire. Their cloaks were billowing out with their speed, like huge white wings, and Sif's eyes looked wild and murderous. "This is not going to be my favorite day ever," Clint said, crouching in the truck bed, panting. 

The chopper had lifted off the compound roof and was swinging overhead, matching speeds, and the cargo line came down. He shoved his foot in the loop, clicked his waist carabiner on for balance, and then he bent down and heaved the huge limp deadweight of the sheet-wrapped body across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "Go," he said into the earpiece, and the chopper lifted him up and into the air, just as Sif and the Valkyries caught the truck, and her sword came slashing down through the bed. 

Clint gave himself a mental pat on the back. Four whole seconds to spare—shit! He had to swivel his hips to make the cable swing wildly: Sif had just leaped into the bed, up onto the roof of the truck, and flung herself out into the air towards him. Her fingers caught on the toe of his boot, and for one very bad moment Clint thought she was going to stick. He managed to point his toe forward, and she slipped away, smashing thirty feet straight down into the ground. 

She rolled back up to her feet and stood looking after him, flushed with rage, and pointed her sword at him. "There is nowhere you can go we cannot follow, mortal!" she roared, and it was not even a challenge to hear her over the sound of the rotors, even as the cable wound up and the guys grabbed the body off his shoulders. 

Clint gave her a salute and unslung his bow as they came on after the chopper. He got himself positioned in the cabin door and started putting down fire in their path. 

They caught him five states later, in the middle of North Dakota. He'd gone through three helicopters, a jet, and was solo in a Jeep with the swathed body in the back, six Valkyries on his tail on motorcycles, when Sif stepped out into the middle of the road in front of him and just put out her boot and stopped the car. The Jeep flipped tail end up, went flying over her head, and slammed rear-down into the ground. 

It fell backward onto the roof with a crash. Clint hung in the seatbelt straps for a moment before he managed to fumble after his knife. He got hold of it, right as Sif ripped him and the entire seat out through the driver's side door and flung him to her feet. She glared down at him. The Valkyries had caught up. They gathered around him, their bikes rumbling low and angry and their swords out. 

"So," he said, coughing. "Funny running into you ladies like this."

Sif grabbed him by the belt and lifted him—seat and all—into the air to look into her face. "And what has all your folly availed you, save to dishonor the body of our dead, flinging him like so much carrion from one mean death-cart to another while you fled us?" she said bitterly. She jerked her head at the Valkyries, and two of them went to the back of the Jeep. 

"I wouldn't really be worried about that," Clint said. 

"That Thor's remains can take little hurt is no excuse for your disrespect," she said. 

"Not what I meant, actually," Clint said. 

"My lady!" Sif looked over. "It is not the prince, my lady," one of the Valkyries said, pale, stepping back from the wreck. "It is the body of a mortal."

"What?" Sif stared. "But Heimdall said—" 

"Yeah, see," Clint said, "Thor's mentioned him a couple times, and we figured he'd let you know where, if we hid Thor before you got here—"

She shook the car seat hard enough to snap his head back. "Where did you make the exchange?" she snarled. "Where have you taken his body! Speak, mortal, or I will tear the answer from your broken flesh!" 

"Five minutes and thirty-seven seconds after you touched down," Clint said, swallowing a groan. Damn, he hadn't needed that. "And if you don't mind, I'd much appreciate it if we skipped the torture. I made sure I didn't know where they were taking him." 

She flung the car seat down hard and stalked several paces away, her hands clenched by her side, shoulders heaving with fury. The other Valkyries exchanged uncertain glances and watched her. Clint managed to cut himself loose from the belt and slowly pried himself out of the chair and back to his feet. He felt like several thousand miles of bad road. 

"You mind hearing me out now?" he said. "We're not actually looking to be your enemies, you know." 

"No," she said over her shoulder, bitterly. "You only make yourselves so, from folly and willful blindness." 

"Look," Clint said, "we're not hanging on to the body for kicks—"

"You cling to it in the service of Loki!" she said, whirling on him. "Loki Liesmith, who would fain do even more harm than already he has done. Tell me, mortal, do you think it a small matter to follow in the footsteps of the dead, even for one of Asgard?" 

"No," Clint said grimly: just what he'd been hoping not to hear. "I don't. You saying Loki has something else in mind? Or he's just not going to make it happen?" 

Sif laughed, harshly. "What worse could he have in mind?" she said. "And I have no doubt he will succeed: evil deeds come easily to his hand."

"I got the feeling you were Thor's pal," Clint said warily. 

"I am," Sif said. "And even if I must destroy Thor's body without doing him the honor his valor merited, I will not allow this sacrilege to come to pass." 

"Back up a minute," Clint said. "You're saying if Loki makes it back, if he actually gets here with Thor's spirit—if he could bring Thor back to life, one hundred percent okay, you're _not_ on board with that?"

"Can you be such a fool!" she cried. "Even to step upon the boughs of Yggdrasil does not come without a cost: do you think so great a sacrilege as this, so deep a violation of the order of the universe, would not demand more than you and all your world can bear?"


	8. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Steve," Bucky said over his shoulder, "not that it's not nice to see you, but this isn't the greatest idea you've ever had."

"Steve," Bucky said over his shoulder, "not that it's not nice to see you, but this isn't the greatest idea you've ever had." 

"Feeling okay about it right now," Steve said, and meant it. He was cold, and exhausted, and out of breath, but it wasn't far to camp now, to camp and the rest of the team, a hot cup of bad, bitter, dirty-sock coffee and a lukewarm ration pack and everyone yelling at him for how long he'd taken to show up. He couldn't wait. 

Bucky was just barely out in front, breaking the trail for Steve to flounder along behind him. Steve could reach out a hand and touch him, any time he liked. They were knee-deep in snow, slogging through a dark forest: just the two of them, moon throwing weird twisted-branch shadows on the snow that moved unexpectedly with odd gusts of wind. He didn't look at them too hard. Everything was quiet but the crunch of their boots, the soft huff of their breath. 

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Just the two of us, and your pals back there."

Steve didn't want to think about that. 

"I'm serious, buddy," Bucky said. "I'll take you as far as I can go, but are you sure you want to help this Loki guy get behind the lines?" 

"We're here to save a friend," Steve said, as much as he wanted to let himself remember: he let the name _Loki_ go sliding off his mind. 

"If your friend's here, you're too late for that," Bucky said. 

"Late," Steve said. "Oh, shit. I'm _late_." 

"Sounds like that's my cue," Bucky said. He stepped aside and clapped Steve on the shoulder, the thump of his hand strangely heavy, comforting. "Watch your back, pal." 

"Yeah," Steve said, throwing back a last grateful look, already running—late, he was _late_ , how the hell had he forgotten—

He pushed through the doors. The dance hall was packed, everyone laughing, a lot of people drunk, cigarette smoke familiar and welcome in his nostrils leaving a thin haze everywhere. It was a good band, too. He picked his way through the crowd as best he could, heads turning to glance down at him as he shoved through. "Excuse me," he said, to the back of one woman's head, and she turned and stared at him, and for a moment her face was a skull, maggots squirming in the eyes. He jerked back and looked down: she'd put a hand on his arm, rotting. 

Others were turning around, reaching out for him, hands of pale bone and red flesh, things crowding in behind them that were worse, that he was trying not to look at, and then a voice said, "This is my dance, I think." All of a sudden it was just a dance hall again, the crowd turning away again to their own laughter and conversation as Peggy took his arm. 

His breath was coming fast; his chest ached, even as she drew him away, towards the bar. "Nice place," he managed, through horror. 

"Not my idea, Rogers," she said. 

_Ask them nothing_ , Loki's warning echoed in the back of his head, a stab of pain even to remember it. _It is perilous to know anything of the realm of the dead._

But—"Peggy," he said. 

"Don't," she said. 

"I have to," he said. "Peggy, I have to know—"

" _Don't_ ," she said. "It's bad enough you're here at all. Besides," she added, "you still owe me that dance." 

He let her draw him onto the floor. It wasn't hard at all, once you got the trick of it, even if his feet didn't always go where he wanted them to. She took the lead, guiding him; every so often they bumped one couple or another, a couple of times someone gave him a cold look, but she found openings and empty spaces, and he kept his arms close around her. 

They made it to the end of the long, long dance floor, and she drew him off and around the end of the bar. There was a back door almost out of sight down a long hallway, a slice of light showing underneath it. He looked at it. "Good luck," Peggy said. 

He didn't let go of her hand. "Peggy," he said, "Can you come with me?"

"Certainly, do you have somewhere for me to stay when we get there?" she said, dry as her favorite martini. "No, Rogers. I had my run. It was a good one, even if you did skip out on me halfway through."

He didn't let go. There was a slow hard pressure building: a steady drilling pain like someone had a corkscrew to a spot on the back of his skull and was turning it, curls of bone shaving away as it bored inside. But Peggy was here, Bucky was here, the guys—all of them trapped in this place—

"You don't know what you're asking," she said. 

"I know it's going to hurt," he said. "But I'm not going to leave you in a jam, and right now that's what this looks like to me."

She was looking at him with tears in her eyes. "What do you imagine you could even do, you _idiot_?"

He didn't know. "Loki needs me to open that door," he managed finally, heel of his hand pressed hard against his temple. "Maybe he knows some way—" It hurt to even think that much. "Peggy, please." 

"We're in your heart," she said. "We're between all the places that can be and will be and ever were. And we belong here, and you don't. Now _stop asking_." 

It wasn't the words: it was the way she said them. The knot that had been sitting deep in his stomach all the way down here started fraying loose at last. The pain was still there, but it did stop getting worse, and after a while he got his breath back and managed to straighten up. She was looking at him, her face hard with what he'd figured out after way too much wasted time was worry. 

"So, uh," he said, "—we have time for one more dance?"

She took a quick deep breath. "We have time for all the dances you want," she said. "But the door won't be here when we're done." 

He swallowed. "Can—could the others keep going?" 

"Yes," she said, looking at their clasped hands, and then with her other she reached up and brushed the sliding tears from her face in two quick efficient strokes, tips of her fingers across one cheek and then the other. "Damn you, Rogers, _go_." 

He held on to her for one more moment: her cool strong hand in his, hardened from shooting practice, her eyes shining wet, the smooth dark wave of her hair shadowing her cheek, and then he opened his hand one finger at a time and let her go: because there were people behind him, people depending on him. 

"I'll see you soon," he called after her. She threw one last look over her shoulder at him, full of a sorrow he didn't understand, and then she was swallowed up by the dance floor, gone. He turned and walked down the long hallway to the door. He pushed it open and stepped through. 

Dr. Erskine glanced up from his desk. "Well, Steven," he said. "I'm afraid you have been somewhat incautious." 

"Yeah," Steve said. He was feeling pretty sick to his stomach. The lab with its cool metal tables and too-bright fluorescent lights hurt his eyes. "I'm not looking to be told any more details, just so you know." 

Erskine snorted. "I should hope not," he said. "Are you ready, then?" 

"Ready?" Steve said. "Ready for what?"

Erskine indicated with a finger; Steve turned around. In the center of the room, the huge metal coffin stood, the capsule with its faceplate and huge silver tubes snaking away. Steve swallowed. It was still his definition of pain. Outside, it had been a few minutes. Inside, it had gone on forever. He'd felt every inch of his body rewritten: skin and muscle opened up to shove in new bones, blood vessels carving new channels. When the seal had cracked, he'd come out newborn and strange even to himself. 

He looked down at himself, the body he'd never really stopped thinking of as his own: spindly arms, the concave chest, the hands weaker than he wanted them to be. "I get the feeling this is going to hurt," he said. 

"Of course it's going to hurt," Erskine said. "Worse than the first time, if you want to know."

"I didn't really," Steve said. He took a deep breath and climbed up into it, and lay himself down. "I'm ready, Doc. Let's go." 

It wasn't like walking somewhere, but it wasn't not like that, either. It was like going into himself, down and down, looking for the bottom and hoping he didn't find it too soon. He heard himself screaming—no, there wasn't really any sound in here; he _felt_ himself screaming. Erskine was a shadow, moving somewhere on the other side of the glass; once in a while a voice saying something to him, molasses-slow and stretched out too long to understand, but encouraging: he was still going somewhere, still on the long road. 

It lasted forever all over again, but finally the pain receded, going away in waves. After a while, Steve could think again. His head still pounded: he could hear his own heartbeat drumming in his ears. He stared up through the faceplate. Golden light was streaming through it from the other side. Slowly he put out his hands to the lid and pushed. 

The light spilled in over him like honey, warm and molten-soft and way too bright. He shielded his eyes, groping with his other hand; he mostly slid out of the capsule and hit the ground wobbly, down to his knees and falling forward. He caught himself on his hands and stared down at them: big hands, strong hands, new-made. 

Loki's boots stepped into his view, and Steve winced away from them for a moment. The throbbing pain in the back of his head felt worse. 

"Idiot," Loki said. "We're fortunate you didn't strand us all." 

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," Steve said, pushing himself up. The pain was still there, still fresh and sharp, but he couldn't let that stop him. He made himself stand and look at them: all of them somehow _faded_. Natasha looked back at him briefly: her face was drawn, and he could see a mark on her face, a faint red imprint of a hand, like the ghost of a hard slap. Tony wouldn't look back at him: he had his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders hunched in a way Steve hadn't ever seen on him, a dark sullen look aimed at the ground, his mouth turned down and hard. Bruce had his glasses off in one hand and was wiping at his eyes, his face wet and cast to green; there were a few green veins standing out on his arms. The Hulk was gone. 

"Are we through?" Steve said. "Did we make it?" 

"Almost," Loki said. _He_ looked fine, untouched. His cape was billowing in the wind, and the golden light was making his armor glow like a sunset. "There's only so far your dead could bring us."

Steve turned. The golden light was shining down from a hill above them, a citadel standing high at the snow-capped summit. It looked like a long way up, and a hard and narrow path. "I'm guessing we can't just walk the rest of the way," he said. 

"No," Loki said. 

"So what's the plan?" Steve looked at the others, frowning. They hadn't said anything. "Everybody okay?" 

No one answered him. Steve looked around and prodded. "Guys?" They turned away from him, silent. After a moment, Natasha went over to a low boulder and sat down, her hands clenched on her knees. Tony had turned away and was looking out over the cliff where the ground fell off behind them. What the hell.

"They have come as far as they can," Loki said. "They'll have to wait here. You'd best remain with them, to keep them from harm." 

"What?" Steve said, wheeling on him. "You just rode our backs all the way here, and you think you're leaving us now?"

"Do you propose to drag them?" Loki said. "None of them are ready to take this road." Steve looked back at the others. He had the bad feeling that Loki wasn't wrong. He'd seen it happen before on the battlefield, to good men, some of the best—guys who'd just pushed themselves and pushed until they'd hit a wall inside, and all they could do was stop and huddle down into the cellars, close the windows and the doors and wait for the storm to go by overhead. 

Loki added, "I'll collect you all on my way back. Keep in mind I still need you for that." 

The road they were standing in was empty both ways, dusty and unused. The cliff behind them fell off into a canyon, wide enough Steve couldn't even see the other side; all around in either way the sky was as open as a big china-blue bowl. There were no other travelers, no signs of life but the great golden hall on the mountain above. Tony had sat down and started throwing pebbles down into the canyon. Bruce had huddled into the side of the mountain. They didn't look like they were planning to move any time soon. 

"No," Steve said grimly after a moment, wrestling. "I'm coming with you." 

Loki shrugged. "So long as you don't reproach me if we return to find some of them lost," he said, and it almost made Steve change his mind: he'd have been happier if Loki had tried to fight him on it, tried to persuade him to stay. Except of course, Loki probably knew that, so—oh, man, Steve hated anything to do with this guy. 

"How are we getting up there, anyway?" Steve said. "Seeing how you've used us up." 

"I've used your dead," Loki said. "I haven't yet used my own." 

"You're immortal, aren't you?" Steve said. "I'm guessing you don't have a lot of dead." 

Loki was silent a long moment, looking up the mountain road. "Only one of any significance," he said, and Steve, looking, saw a huge figure breaking away from the shadows of the peak, coming down the path towards them, his skin a deep inky blue and his eyes a cold and glaring red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the fb! ♥ All kinds loved as always! ♥


	9. Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laufey laughed. "Loki, son of Laufey," he said, the chant echoing like death bells from the passageway. "Loki, son of Laufey, son of Utgard-Loki, son of Mimir the Wise, son of Bolthorn, son of Ymir Firstborn, of whom are all our kings descended: what questions would you ask me, here in the realm of the dead?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you are not all wildly confused: I am not sticking strictly to any particular canon here, but mashing up ideas from movie/comicsverses and from the myths and making bunches of stuff up out of my head.
> 
> Also spoiler note: a few more brief callbacks to lines from the Avengers movie.

"You presume greatly, whelp," Laufey said, looking down at them. 

"Not really," Loki said, with a thin smile. "After all, I defeated you, didn't I?" 

Laufey snorted. "Through lies and trickery," he said, "and all that you might continue to cringe at Odin's feet like a servile dog. I should have crushed your newborn skull with my thumbs." 

"Hindsight's always perfect," Loki said. "Lead the way, sire mine." 

Rogers eyed him sidelong as they began the climb behind Laufey's long angry stride, trotting to keep him in view. "Uh, so that's your—"

"My father," Loki said. "Or mother: it's somewhat indeterminate, among frost giants." He paused just the right length of time for Rogers to digest that, and added brightly, "I killed him." 

It silenced the mortal, which was some small blessing, since he couldn't be gotten rid of—an inconvenience at best, dangerous at worst. Loki didn't know what the dead had given him, but he could see Rogers carrying it in his belly like a hot coal. He'd been near enough to get the scent of it like burning flesh, watching Rogers swallow it down in his blind folly. 

To be fair, Loki hadn't been wary enough with him. He'd expected it from Stark, to reach for forbidden knowledge; had waited for it hawklike, and then instead—Loki twisted his neck a little as they walked, cracking the joints, trying to loosen the grip of memory. 

He'd had to bury himself deep in them to slip past all the watchful eyes of the guardians of the dead, deep enough even to feel a little with them. He'd expected puerile visions from Stark, a life like Thor's on but a pettier scale of wealth and glory. But his dead had taken him through no triumphal parades, no easy victories: Stark had only ridden down in the dark and roaring confines of a small plane, his father laboring with dirty urgent hands upon a smoking engine, despair and determination so seated upon his shoulders that he did not once look up as the craft continued on its endless tumbling to the earth. Did not look up, and said not a word, though Stark sought to speak with him again and again. 

Loki had braced himself for the collision, thinking Stark lost: too entangled with the amber-caught moment to free himself and flee onward; and then his mother had come. The touch of her hand had been very like a blow, and worse afterwards. She had drawn Stark through the cabin door, and he'd run a little while in a garden as a laughing child, in sunlight, a moment of unbearable sweetness. To a child so small all mothers and all gardens were one: caught in the trap of Stark's memory and sorrow, Loki had walked in Frigga's garden, the scent of apple-blossoms on the air. He could yet smell their fragrance a little, haunting. 

Laufey snorted, glancing back at him. "That any get of mine should come to this." 

"You've little grounds for complaint," Loki said. "Did you expect much loyalty after exposing me to die?"

"Did Odin tell you I did so?" Laufey said. "You are quick to swallow lies, for a liar."

Loki stiffened, hunger awakening and tearing into him with wolf's-teeth: the question was instantly rising to his lips, a hundred questions, enough to destroy even an immortal. He shut his jaws upon them hard.

Laufey laughed, a low rumbling sound like stones falling down a cliffside, heralds of avalanche. "So you strip yourself to bare bone and come crawling down here after Odin's get, to put your leash back into his hands, but you close your ears to what would make you free. Puling coward. I am shamed to have taken my death-blow at your hands." 

He reached ahead and casually thrust aside a great fall of rock which barred the way; but he flung the boulders aside noisily, that small beasts put up their heads from the crevices to peer at them, and some distance away Loki heard a faint howl: they were not unobserved. 

"Because I am not to be so easily baited?" Loki said, striving to master his voice. "I need to hear no secrets from you; if I desire them, I will ferret them loose in my own time."

"From whom will you get them, runt?" Laufey said. "Who yet lives who can tell you the truth? Odin?" He laughed again, while Loki clenched his hands, impotent and torn. 

"Hey," Rogers said; Loki flinched and looked at him: he'd nearly forgotten the mortal was even there. "Is this really a good idea for us to keep following someone you _killed_? What if he takes us in the wrong direction?" 

"He cannot," Loki said. "The dead cannot lie." 

The road was growing steeper, and more dark. Thin flurries of snow blew upon them, brief flickers of cold upon his skin as they climbed. Loki scarcely noticed, struggling to decide upon the question. He could bear one surely; even the mortal had managed that. Two perhaps, and three—no more than three. Three questions, three truths. 

A hand fell on his shoulder. "Loki," Rogers said, "Not that we're pals or anything, but whatever he's trying to sell you, it's not for your own good." 

Loki struck aside Rogers' hand. "Unlike you," he hissed, "I know what I'm doing." 

"Yeah?" Rogers said. "And do _you_ think it's a good idea?" 

It wasn't, of course. Knowledge gained in the lands of the dead was poison even to the strongest mind: if he drank too deep he might leave himself writhing and broken in the dirt, reduced to helpless carrion to be picked apart by all the guardians of the realm, all the hovering vultures. Not even death would release him: it was not death which came of that devouring, but long torment until a final dissolution came. He looked up: eagles circled overhead, watching, drawn to the noise of their passage. Laufey would take pleasure in that, he supposed, in watching him torn and pecked to a bloody carcass, standing above him all the while and smiling. Loki shuddered. 

The path was growing still more steep, slippery now underfoot. Where he reached out to grip one frost-rimed stone or the next for a handhold, his fingertips flushed deep blue. They followed Laufey down into the deep confines of a twisting icy crevasse, the golden light of the hall lost far away overhead and hidden by the shadows of the passage walls. A place of darkness and of secrets, a place where the scavengers could not easily come. 

"Laufey," Loki said, stopping. 

" _Hey_ ," Rogers said, grabbing at his arm again. "Is this worth more to you than getting out of here with Thor?" 

Loki turned and caught him by the throat, pinned him against the cold grey wall, the ends of his fingers staining Rogers' skin with ice. "No," he hissed. " _Nothing_ is worth more: and why should that be so? Why should I be ready to lay down my life for his? Why should I care when he is nothing to me—not brother, not kin, not friend?" He flung Rogers away, to the rough stone.

Rogers fell back and caught at his throat coughing, gasping for breath, and croaked out, "Because he loves you."

Loki laughed, the sound echoing back to him fractured off the close walls. "As the master loves the ill-trained dog at his heels," he said, derisive. "The scabrous pet, pitied and disliked." 

"Fine," Rogers said. "Because _you_ love _him_." 

The laughter died in his throat: too kind a sound for his feelings, even harsh as it already was. Of course. Even Thor's pathetic mortal companions could see his weakness now. He wondered how long it would be before they dared to trade upon it: to ask his _help_ , in the sure knowledge that he would be bound to them by that love—by the mere hope of Thor's gratitude, Thor's notice, even a scrap of attention sweet enough to scrabble after.

"Worm," Laufey said, heavy with contempt, his towering shadow falling over them from behind Loki's back. "This is what you will reduce yourself to, willingly? You, who _should_ be king?" 

Rogers looked up, startled into silence. Loki was still. _You who should be king_ , the words whispered back to him echoing from the stones, mocking. He had not known that ambition long; only since he'd lost all that he'd thought was his beyond anyone's taking: family and home and name. What was left but rank and rule and glory, to make himself a place? He'd sought them and reached for them, but he knew in his secret heart that he had lied when he claimed them by right. They belonged to Thor, not to him. 

He had lied. Laufey could not. 

"Loki," Rogers said, reaching out a hand towards him. 

"Tell me," Loki said. 

Laufey laughed. "Loki, son of Laufey," he said, the chant echoing like death bells from the passageway. "Loki, son of Laufey, son of Utgard-Loki, son of Mimir the Wise, son of Bolthorn, son of Ymir Firstborn, of whom are all our kings descended: what questions would you ask me, here in the realm of the dead?"

Loki drew a breath. The pain was the tip of a knife, teasing at his bare and vulnerable side, barely pricking the skin. "Why did you leave me upon the altar?" 

"Three days and nights you lay upon the high altar of Jotunheim after your birth," Laufey said, "and never did your wailing cease: the trial of the new-born king. The first night proved you warrior, the second king; but the third night proved you sorcerer, and at its end did Odin come to reave you, before my people could fetch you hence. Would you know yet more?"

A cautious question, judicious. The knife had slid in, deep and straight, between his ribs: nothing vital yet touched, only the sensation of a thin hot rivulet running away from the hilt. "You did not mean only king of Jotunheim," Loki said. "You meant king of Asgard. What right have I to that throne?" 

"What right has Odin to it?" Laufey said. "Odin One-Eye. Odin son of Borr son of Bestla—Bestla, daughter of Bolthorn, who mingled her blood with the Aesir, and corrupted her line thereby." 

The knife twisted. Loki sucked in a breath, catching it deep in his throat; he felt the edge of the blade feathering against his lung, his entrails. "Odin is—Odin's grandmother was a Jotun?" he said. "His grandmother, and—and she was—she was my kin, my aunt far removed, but—" He stopped; trying to work it out, the necessary path. "Odin's right to the throne comes through Bolthorn?" he whispered. "But why—?" 

"His _right_ comes through descent of Ymir Firstborn, who through his blood and power raised the great citadel of Asgard from the waves," Laufey said. "Ymir whom he slew to seize that hall, and of whom you are more truly descended." 

Loki put his hand upon the wall of stone and held there, cold to marrow and to heart. The fall of Ymir was an ancient tale, much loved: Loki had recited it himself in hall, Odin and his brothers bringing low the vile murderous frost giant, and the shining citadel rearing itself up upon the bones of his dismembered corpse. 

How different was that tale, if Odin was descended of Ymir. Kinslayer, the old dread word. These were no small and petty secrets: these were truths which Odin must have spent power to carve out of history itself, to conceal from all the worlds; secrets which he had buried in his own heart beyond all telling. Loki shut his eyes. The pain was burning and already near unendurable—if the blade dug again, dug deeper, he would fall. 

"Would you know yet more?" Laufey hissed. 

" _Why?_ " Loki said, the last, the truest question torn out of him. "Why would Odin take me? Why would Odin—why would he take in a rival to his house, to his own son—" 

He sank to his knees, just for the asking: the knife was heating to a sizzle in his flesh, ready to carve out some necessary part. Laufey laughed, malicious and satisfied, and opened his mouth to answer, and then Rogers seized a stone beside him and flung it, quick and hard, so it took Laufey directly in the eye with a sharp point. Laufey roared in fury and in pain, covering his face as the dark blood ran down, and Rogers took Loki by the arm and dragged him up and onward past. 

Loki almost resisted, but some animal part of him longed also to flee. Rogers pulled him onward up the path that kept rising sharper still, and Loki stumbled along with him dizzy and weak. "You are _not_ checking out on me here, Loki," Rogers said. "Come on!" 

Loki managed to wave a hand to warn him, before the direwolf sprang down from the heights, now they had left Laufey's protection; Rogers turned just barely in time to duck beneath its savage teeth and heave it past his head. Loki sank to the ground and fell back against the stone while Rogers squared off against the beast.

"Uh," Rogers said, half under his breath, "I don't suppose we can talk about this?" 

His eyes widened as the direwolf snarled and said, "I will drink your blood, then his."

It sprang again, and Rogers ducked underneath again and rammed it with his shoulder into the cliff wall, then again, two more hard blows, the wolf's jaws snapping over his head and its hind legs clawing ferociously at him. 

Loki watched their struggle dully while the pain feasted in his belly, in all his limbs, closed on him like the jaws of a trap he had seen lying in the path ahead, known and even so unavoidable. "Did you mean to make _amends?_ " Loki whispered to Odin, who would not hear it. "Did you think to wash clean your hands by giving me a _chance_ to win the throne—a fool's chance, in a challenge you arranged?" 

Odin might have given him those same truths. Odin might have spared him the horror of thinking himself a monster of a monstrous line, unwanted even by them; saved merely out of pity by the noble king of the Aesir, and generously allowed to share the home which would come to his own true-born son by right. 

Loki felt something like laughter trying to claw out of his throat; he did not let the sound come. How stupid of him. Of course, Odin could not have done any such thing. Name himself kinslayer and usurper? Reveal that his throne and his very hall were the stolen work of jotun hands? Acknowledge his stolen war-prize their rightful heir, above his own son? 

He clenched shut his fists and pressed them to his eyes. It was doom to come to the land of the dead. He'd known that, even as he'd put his foot upon the road. Laufey's secrets had not lifted the chain from his neck, only made it heavier. What difference did any of it make? All Laufey's truths—what _use_ were they? For in the end, there was still Thor. Thor who shone as noble and untouched by malice as Odin had so desperately pretended to be. 

And oh, Thor would be shocked and appalled, surely, to learn the truth. He would quarrel with Odin over it, perhaps even stand aside for Loki. But Thor would not diminish in glory. If he offered Loki Asgard's throne, he would only make himself look the brighter thereby. Thor might even be delighted to put Loki there—to purify the sins of his own line, and leave Loki to mind the hearth as caretaker, while Thor continued his glorious course of adventure with his nobler, better-loved friends unburdened by kingly duties. After all, Loki would hold the throne only by Thor's sufferance; Thor would surely rise against him if he did aught of which Thor disapproved. 

And Loki would be as powerless to resist as he was powerless to turn back now. He loved Thor no less. He would still claw his way onward to the golden hall; he would still take Thor's spirit back; he would still bow his head to his shining brother's yoke and remain as Odin had worked to make him: weak and pathetic, bound by sentiment and lies. 

"A little help here!" Rogers shouted over his shoulder, straining. 

Well, that answered his earlier question, Loki supposed. The pain was dulling, at least; perhaps because the secrets were all so useless in the end. Slowly he dragged himself to his feet. There was a small loose pebble lying upon the ground; he picked it up and limped towards them. The wolf snarled as he approached and tried to bite; Loki waited until its jaws were open, snapping, and he darted in his hand to leave the stone in the back of the jaw, not quite quickly enough: he lost a little flesh off the middle finger. 

The pebble swelled and grew, forcing the wolf's jaws open. "Let it down," Loki said, pressing his thumb to the wound to hold it closed. Rogers heaved the wolf awkwardly away from himself, and it began to thrash and circle its own tail in the path, trying to spit out the stone and free itself. 

Rogers was panting, scratched and bleeding, but nothing deep. "Let's not wait for it to get that out," he said, and took Loki by the arm and drew him on. Loki didn't bother to shake him off. 

The path kept growing ever more treacherous and sheer, until it was at last little better than a sheer cliff rising away: the golden light poured down it like a waterfall, glowing through the translucent ice. Rogers stared up it, dismayed, and then a howl came from down the path behind them: a howl, soon answered by others. 

"That's not a good sound," he said. 

"Follow me," Loki said, tiredly. He put his hand on the cliffside, and called ice: the blue stain crept through his flesh, and a handhold built itself beneath his grip. He reached up and made another, and then pulled himself up to make the next. The ice answered him easily, like a friend, and it was a mindless task. The pain numbed still more. He climbed and climbed, only distantly registering the howls below and the scrabbling sound of claws, until he finally pulled himself over the cliff's edge, and saw away across a plain of thick green grass the great shining hall. 

Against his will his spirit lifted: they were so _close_. Valhalla, home of heroes and the truly great, at the very heart and peak of the realm of the dead: and he had won his way this far. 

"Can they get up here?" Rogers asked. 

"What?" Loki said. 

"The wolves. They took off when we were about halfway up. Is there another way up here?" 

"There are a thousand ways up here," Loki said. 

"I was afraid you were going to say that," Rogers said. "Whoa!" He leaped and tackled Loki to the ground as a great eagle stooped, clawing briefly at them with talons larger than his head. It shrieking circled away overhead. As they struggled to their feet, a wolf appeared upon the rim of the plain, perhaps a mile away. It lifted its head and howled. Another six appeared behind it. 

"Any ideas?" Rogers said. 

"In circumstances like these, I'm generally fond of running," Loki said. 

They flung themselves across the plain. Loki shed his cloak, leaving it to billow away green and disappear into the sea of grass, and after that his surcoat; Rogers shrugged off his coat. In the light of the hall it was warm as midsummer. "How—how do we—get in!" Rogers shouted at him, as they fled. The wolves had launched themselves in pursuit: it would be a near-run thing, Loki distantly noted. Possibly in the wrong direction. 

"We'll want to try the _door_ ," he snapped back, panting, and ducked away from the eagle again. 

The grass yielded to a courtyard of golden paving-stones, and then the great stairs rising. Loki threw himself up them, two and three at a time, Rogers on his heels. The sculpted doors of bronze were as vast as the citadel of Asgard: they stretched into immensity overhead. There was no sign of any handle or lock. 

They reached the doors and put their shoulders to the left, heaving as one. It didn't move. Loki cursed under his breath and stepped back, put his hands to them both and spoke the words of opening, all of them he knew, one after another. His finger was still sluggishly bleeding: he scraped it against the carvings to open the wound again, and drew upon the bronze panels the runes _Perdhro_ and _Raidho_. Nothing of interest happened, although _Perdhro_ smoked a little. 

"I'm guessing we're in trouble," Rogers said. He was still straining. 

"Thank you for noticing," Loki said, backing from the doors and looking up. There were handholds enough for them to climb, where the wolves couldn't follow, but the eagle would claw at them until they fell. 

"Hey!" Rogers yelled at the door, and pounded his fist upon it. "Hey, anybody in there want to let us in?" 

"Yes, because _that's_ likely," Loki said, turning: the howling pack was drawing near in great bounding leaps. "If we slay the lead one, the others may draw back, at least for a little while—the grey-shouldered one in front." 

"The one that's the size of a pony?" Rogers said. 

"Yes," Loki said. It occurred to him, if the pack pulled Rogers under, he might be able to take the chance to slip away. He could lose himself in the shadows while they glutted themselves on his blood, and perhaps twist himself into some other shape: the realm of the dead was not so malleable a place as Yggdrasil, but he had the necessary spells. Some small creature, which could hide in the grass, and perhaps find some hole to squirm through into Valhalla. 

Thor would of course be bitterly disappointed in him, but that was inevitable, really. Thor would have to content himself with his brave and noble friends and his throne and his endless glory, and let that console him for his inadequate brother's failings. 

"Loki," Rogers said, not looking away from the oncoming pack, "if there's some way you can get out of this, you don't have to wait until my back is turned to take it." 

"What?" Loki said, staring at him. 

Rogers glanced at him briefly, somewhere between exasperated and contemptuous. "I knew the score when I came down here," he said. "And even if you _were_ ready to stick it out, if there's some way you can still get out of here with Thor and the others, I'd want you to take it. So if you've got a back door, go ahead." 

The look, the tone, all might have been Thor's from beginning to end, lacking only the condescending fondness. Loki wondered whether the pack would still be interested if he broke Rogers' neck and threw him down to them already dead. "How generous your permission," he hissed. "Do you think I was ever going to bring any of you back at all? Why should I?" 

"What?" Rogers said. 

"You're my _enemies_ ," Loki said. "You hate and despise me, you've thwarted me a dozen times. My own brother—" _loves you_ "—cleaves to you above me—" 

"You showed up on our planet and started killing innocent people!" Rogers said, his voice rising. "What do you expect, flowers in your path?" 

"I expect nothing from any of you," Loki said. "I was merely glad to use you; if you expected more from _me_ , you are a fool." He felt a sudden visceral delight, hope leaping: oh, Thor would _hate_ him for this. He would throw it into Thor's face: would tell him that the mortals had come blindly, innocent lambs to the slaughter; that he had spent them to rescue Thor and then abandoned them helpless to wither and be torn apart in the realms of the dead. _That_ would be a little freedom, perhaps: if Thor chose to be his enemy truly at last, to bar him from his presence—

"Go to hell!" Rogers said, taking a step towards him. "Enemy or not, we came down here to help you—" 

"And so you have," Loki said, with a mocking bow. "I'll be sure to let Thor know the value of your aid." 

"You are one piece of work, you know that?" Rogers said. "Are you sitting there gloating inside about shoving it in Thor's face that we died bringing him back? Just to make him feel bad?" 

_Yes_ , Loki wanted to say; except—Rogers was right. The momentary flare of hope died, going to ashes in his mouth. The act would do nothing else. Thor would rage at him, would raise a hand against him; and then what? Loki would still be unable to fight him, anything more than mere sparring, and Thor would know that at once. Three exchanges of blows at most, and Thor would lose the killing edge of anger. He would be merely wounded and animal-unhappy, reproachful. Loki would not be his enemy, merely shamefully untrustworthy, or worse yet, incompetent.

"You know," Rogers said, "I didn't get everything going on in that chat you had with the giant, but I got enough not to like the smell of it. Maybe you have got grounds for your beef with Odin. But whatever he did, you've got no right to treat Thor—to treat any of us—like he treated you, like we're just toys you can muck around with—"

" _What?"_ Loki snarled. 

"You heard me," Rogers said. "What, you don't like the comparison?" 

"What Odin did to me—what _Thor_ has done to me—you cannot comprehend," Loki said. 

"You think you had it worse than Natasha?" Rogers said, and Loki flinched, the memory stinging him like a lash of nettles: he had been for a moment that small child waiting trustingly for her mother to return, wide eyes looking around the concrete grey of the training facility. "You think just because you got a raw deal, that's an excuse to pass it along?"

Rogers stopped and shook his head. "You know, forget it," he said. "There's no point even talking to you, is there? Go ahead and run, then. My money's still on the team." 

Loki started laughing, derisively. "Your _team_ ," he said, "can no more find their way home from this place without me than they can turn themselves into birds. Do you understand you put yourselves entirely in my power when you came? All I need do is nothing, and your spirits will wander here lost until they are devoured to nothing but scraps, not even whole enough to find your way to death."

Rogers threw a punch at him. Loki ducked beneath it and thrust him against the door, his eyes glittering. "So would be all your fate," he hissed, "but for me: remember that, Captain." 

"What?" Rogers said, and Loki scrawled the rune of transformation on his chest in blood; Rogers squawked once in alarm and then he was twisting down and down into the tiny furred shape of a field mouse, not even the size of a vole. Loki picked him up by the tail and dropped him down a narrow gap between the stairway and the side of the hall. 

The pack began howling savagely, seeing their prey disappearing. He turned to put the spell upon himself, but two of them were leaping up the stairs; he had to dive to the side, and tumbled down a dozen steps rolling. More of them were after him, the eagle hovering low to catch him if he shifted—Loki cursed himself for a fool and a half; if he managed to get himself torn apart, it would scarcely matter if Rogers survived a little longer. 

He made an ice spear with his hand and swung at the nearest direwolf, slashing open its chest shallowly; it howled enraged and leaped, and he managed to duck so it collided with the one creeping up behind him. He rolled from between them and jumped for the wall, seizing one handhold and another, carvings of flowers and clawed hands, strange misshapen faces peering out at him grinning—maybe if he could get to the roof, and find some sheltered nook there—

The eagle shrieking dived at his head, talons raking across his skull, scraping bone. The pain was fire-hot, and blood spilled down into his eyes. He shut them and kept climbing blind, while the eagle swung around again: he heard the thunder of its wings and at the last moment lashed out. He managed to seize it by one clawed foot, and as it pulled frantically back he stabbed it deep with another blade of ice, to the heart. 

It fell, and he fell with it, dragged off the facade: he landed on the grass heavily, dazed and bloody, and struggled up to find himself surrounded. The direwolves bared their teeth, and he bared his own also, but it was mere bravado: he could not stand long against so many. He wrenched the eagle's foot from its body and whispered an incantation: it swelled in his hand to pitchfork size, and he dropped into a crouch. Perhaps if he could take one or two of them, the others might break and flee.

But the wolves were not fools: they began to space themselves apart, and to flank him. There would be a rush from one of the beasts in front; the ones behind would dart in to hamstring him, and then the leader would—

The Hulk smashed down into the midst of the pack, roaring: crushed two of the beasts into the dirt, and seizing the leader in a fist beat him wildly against the ground and then flung him carelessly away. He seized another of the wolves and hurled it against the building's wall, so hard it streaked blood down as it fell. 

After watching the carnage a few moments still crouched, Loki let himself slowly sink the rest of the distance to the ground, then tipped backwards until he was resting against the wall. The remaining direwolves were yelping and in full flight, Hulk bellowing after them in glee and victory. He grunted in satisfaction and turned. "Loki OK?"

"Yes," Loki said. He reached up a hand to his head and folded the torn skin of his scalp back over the wound, pressing it into place. He wiped the blood from his forehead and his eyes. "Thank you," he added. 

"Captain OK?" Hulk said, his brows beetling together in a frown. "Where Captain?" 

"Yes, we'd better find him," Loki said. He'd get up in a moment. He closed his eyes and let his head lean back against the cool stone. 

Footsteps came near. "That sounds suspiciously like you misplaced him somewhere," Stark said. 

"How did you get up here?" Loki asked, without opening his eyes, in vague curiosity. 

"Hulk carried us," Natasha said. 

"How did _he_ get up here?" 

"Hulk jump," Hulk said. "Hulk jump lots. Hulk jump up mountain." 

"Well," Loki said, after some brief consideration, "I suppose that's as good a way as any." He waved a hand. "You'll find Captain Rogers somewhere in the grass, most likely. I dropped him on the other side of the stairs."

"Cap?" Stark called. 

"He can't answer you," Loki said. "He's a mouse." 

There was a brief silence. Then Stark said, "I really, deeply, _profoundly_ —"

"We know," Natasha said. 

"Just so we're clear on this," Stark said, "you can't turn people into mice in the real world, right?" 

"Only under specialized conditions," Loki said. 

"And those would be...?" 

"The longer the good Captain is in mouse form, the more likely he'll forget he was ever a man," Loki said. It wasn't as though any of them would know the difference between a spell of transformation and a spell of true change. "Perhaps you'd better start looking." 

It took an hour or so to find him, as they kept hunting in the grass and it turned out Rogers had determinedly managed to scale almost halfway up the building and hadn't noticed them below, buried as he was in the recesses of the facade. Hulk finally spotted him. "Oh my _God_ ," Rogers said, as soon as Loki had turned him back, and he seized Loki by the throat. "Don't you _ever_ —you turned me into a _mouse!_ "

Loki shoved him off. "And as I recall, thereby saved your spirit from dismemberment," he said coolly. 

"You—you—" Rogers spluttered. "You said you were going to leave all of us here!" 

"You annoyed me," Loki said. They didn't need to know he'd meant it at the time. Perhaps he'd mean it again, before it was time to go. "It's moot in any case if we can't get inside the hall," he added, gesturing to the sealed and unmoving doors. "I can't even get myself back without Thor." 

"Hulk smash?" Hulk said. 

"Be my guest," Loki said. 

Hulk's blows and hammering upon the door had not the least visible effect, nor with Rogers' strength and his own joined again to the effort, and even Stark adding his mite. Hulk at last roared with frustration and flung himself down the stairs in a passion, and sat in the grass sulking. The rest of them gave over hammering and sat down on the stairs to rest. 

Romanoff had been watching them; now she rose and climbed to the base of the door, and put something down: something silver. Loki frowned and half-rose to peer at them. She stepped back and said, "Maybe let's move further away." 

"Where'd you get those?" Stark said, standing up. "Those are mine! Those are my micro-grenades that I made for SHIELD! How come you have my grenades and _I_ don't have my—" 

" _Now_ , Tony," she said, and dived over the side of the stairs. The silver devices were beeping loudly. They all flung themselves over after her, pursued by a massive series of explosions, building one upon the other to a crescendo, a great cloud of smoke and fire spreading. The great doors rang like a bell echoing—and were revealed quite undamaged, as the smoke rolled away. 

"Well," Romanoff said, as they stared at the doors in silence from the base of the stairs, "it was worth a try." 

Loki pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes. He felt weary beyond belief. How stupid he'd been, to think there was any way for him into Valhalla. Would it be more or less his destruction, to call on Laufey again? The final question yet hung between them, unanswered; perhaps it would at least be worth destruction to know the answer. Better to be shattered for something real, by his own choice, than merely picked apart by time and failure. Thor was safely cradled in Valhalla, enjoying an unending triumph. He felt no longing, no pain. He would care naught, would not even know when Loki had been destroyed all for this pathetic love of him. Perhaps Thor would even be glad, if he did know. It had been folly to come here all along. 

There was a groan of metal. Loki looked up as the doors shuddered, and were thrust open from within. 

"It _is_ you!" Thor said, laughing, standing within the doorway—brighter and still more golden than the hall itself, and his voice warm with love and joy. Loki felt a queer painful jerk beneath his breastbone, like a trapped rabbit in a snare kicking desperate to be free. "I thought I did hear some noise without. My friends, I rejoice beyond measure to have you all here with me at last. Come in! Come in, and raise a cup with me in celebration of this glorious hour."


	10. Thor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If there is aught else that you desire, you need merely call for it," Thor says hopefully: they are none of them eating even though their cups are full, their plates laden.

Thor draws his friends within the hall and to his table. They have come a long way, thirsty and hungry no doubt. "Bring refreshment for my friends," he calls, and the servants come bearing trays heaped with the great shining roast, the fresh-baked loaves split with butter, the horns of golden ash-brewed mead come from the bark of Yggdrasil, the baskets of Krispy Kremes still warm and dripping shining glaze. 

"There's an elk on the table," Tony Stark says to Steve Rogers. 

"Yeah," Steve says, staring, as they place it before him. The servants have roasted it with the mighty antlers preserved, and covered the points in glazed fruits. 

"Pepper never has elk at any of my parties," Stark says. 

"A small beast I brought down but this morning," Thor says, beaming at them. "Tomorrow we will hunt together, and find better game still!" 

Thor lets himself look at Loki again while the servants lay the table, filled with a deep glad satisfaction. For too long has Thor ached with that hollow absence in his life once inhabited by his brother's strength and sharpness and subtle wit, by love and the certainty of it: those treasures which he had not known how to properly value until they were stolen by Loki's madness and his own helpless wrath. That ache quieted when he climbed the stairs into the golden hall, through the wide-open doors, but it did not leave him wholly; not until now, with Loki arrived for the feasting and sitting once again by his side. 

"If there is aught else that you desire, you need merely call for it," he says hopefully: they are none of them eating even though their cups are full, their plates laden. Hulk at least Thor thought might take a quick pleasure in the feast, but he merely entertains himself by emptying out the horn of fruit upon the table, and putting all the fruit back within. 

"Thor," Loki says, "you know we cannot eat." 

Thor sighs. "I know why you do not," he says. "But there is no purpose in delaying. Will you not drink with me, and be glad we are here again together?" 

"Thor," Steve Rogers says, "if we eat or drink anything, we can't go back." 

"My friends," Thor says gently, "forgive me if I give you any cause for fear or sorrow: but there is no return from this hall." 

They all look at Loki in quick accusation, and Thor wonders with a mild exasperation if Loki did not warn them as he ought have; but it does not truly matter. He no longer bears the responsibility to chastise Loki in their defense: no harm can come to them here, no pain. They will drink, and let go their burdens; they will find ease and peace. 

"None," Loki agrees, "save if you come back with us." 

Thor looks on all of them with love: his brother and his dear friends, brave as the mightiest warriors of Asgard despite all their mortal frailty. "And I will not do so," he says. 

"What?" Tony says. "Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the elk here is top-notch, but come on, Thor. You? Check out on us when you don't have to?"

Thor smiles at him: he knows Stark will find it most difficult both to understand and to drink; it is not in his nature to accept anything as beyond the work of his will and his hands, even the truth of death. "I fell in honorable battle, at the hands of a daring foe, in defense of the innocent," he says, hoping he can by explanation make this easier on them all. "My death was no shameful one, and though mortal life was sweet, my span is done." 

He looks around at them, and is disappointed to find them regarding him only with dismay. "It is not the way of things, that the dead should make the journey back," he tries. "There is always a price to be paid when the order of the universe is overturned. All of you would pay in ways you cannot imagine to return from this place at all, much less with my spirit." 

They are silent, and then Hulk says, "OK." They look at him. Hulk frowns with visible impatience. "OK!"

"He means, dear brother," Loki says, "that we will pay." 

Thor laughs and reaches out a hand to lay on Hulk's fist, and smiles at Hulk's sullen expression. "I am honored by your love and your courage both," he says. "But I will not so use them." 

"What kind of price are we talking, here?" Steve says, low. 

Thor shakes his head. "That, it is not given you or I or any of the wise to know," he says. "The price would not be small, nor levied only on your own heads. I am not the least of the dead, my friends. What value would you yourselves lay upon my life?" 

"You knew about this, didn't you," Steve says to Loki. 

"Don't tell me you imagined a journey to the dead would come without cost," Loki says, a coldness in his voice that Thor regrets to hear. "If you're feeling squeamish, all you need do is take up the cup in front of you and drink. I haven't changed my mind." 

"Loki," Thor says, and turns Loki's face towards him with his hand. How good it is to touch him again without wrath or misery. Though he meant to speak, Thor yields to the impulse of his heart and draws Loki into his arms instead, cheek pressed to Loki's cold and thin one. 

Loki is stiff and unyielding in his arms, then he breaks: his arms come around Thor's body, his hand gripping tightly into Thor's hair and tears wet on Thor's neck. He shudders, and Thor closes his eyes in gratitude. He should feel some regret, he knows, that his friends have given so much, in so wrong a cause—that Earth has been robbed of some of her most valiant defenders. But he cannot regret. He has his brother again. 

Loki tries to draw away; Thor lets him, only a little, enough so he can take Loki's face in both his hands, drawing him near so that their foreheads touch one to the other. Loki's breath upon his lips has a sweet savour. It comes in short bursts, and the hard tension of fatigue runs through his body. He has used himself cruelly to come here: they all have. Thor longs to rise from the table at once, to take Loki to his chambers and ply him there with mead and watch over him as he sleeps; to send all his friends to such sweet rest. Soon, he promises himself. There is no need for haste. All eternity is theirs.

"I missed you so," he says, low.

Loki is still. His fingers card through Thor's hair as though involuntarily. "Have you been lonely here, brother?" he asks. "Is there such a thing, in the golden hall?" 

"Not lonely," Thor says softly back. "But alone." 

Loki nods a little. Thor leans back and reaches for his cup, brimful of mead. "Come, brother, will you not drink?" he asks. "What would you have me return for? To fight battles best left to others, who may carry onward with the memory of our valor to hearten them?" He grips Loki by the shoulder and shakes him gently. "Would you have me come back that _our_ quarrel might be renewed? Does your heart not long also for this peace restored between us? Forget the mortal world, and stay with me." 

Loki is silent. He takes the cup and holds it in the bowl of his hands. Thor keeps his hand on him, letting his thumb stroke over the steady pulse of Loki's heart in his throat. The lamps shine in the smooth undisturbed surface of the mead. Loki's hands are steady. "You will not be alone long," Loki says, gazing down upon it. "We will be but the first to arrive." 

"I know," Thor says serenely. "I am content to wait." 

"You won't have to," Loki says. "All your friends will be here very soon. Perhaps even some of our comrades from Asgard, if they have come to fetch home your body." 

Thor feels the first stirring of something strange: disquiet. It is not an emotion that has any place here. "I will welcome them when they come," he says, recoiling from it. 

His friends do not. "What did you do?" Natasha says, staring at Loki. 

"A deadman's switch," Loki says. "Aptly named, in this case. Thor, did you think I came here without a lure strong enough to bring you back?"

"No," Thor says. He wishes to hear no more. He tries to rise, but Loki rises with him, flings the goblet across the table, mead spilling away in an amber tide. 

"Do you know just how many of those pathetically crude fission missiles they have stockpiled, all over their world?" Loki says, terrible and soft, pursuing him, gripping him by the arms. Thor tries to draw away and cannot. "Thousands upon thousands, and if I do not return in one month's time, dear brother, all of them will fly."

Steve and Tony and Natasha and Bruce are on their feet and yelling at Loki, their anguish breaking upon him like waves on a citadel of stone, which cares nothing for them. The Hulk backs from the table at the shouting to gaze upon them all, uncertainty upon his face. 

"No, big guy, don't go anywhere," Tony says. "We're going to need you to—"

"Do what, exactly?" Loki says to him. "Beat the location of the switch out of me? It's on your own airplane: I left it in your beer fridge. The code to disable it? My brother's name. Who will you tell, Stark? What will you do, here in the realm of the dead, but wait for it to bring all your loved ones hence, their brief candle-lives snuffed out because mighty Thor will not yield the pleasures of Valhalla to save them." 

Loki lets go and steps back, his eyes glittering with a serpent's malice, and even so Thor cannot move, rooted to his place. A coldness like the sharp wind of early spring is biting at his limbs, overtaking the warmth of golden mead and peace. 

"Shall I tell you how many billions will die?" Loki says softly. "Or shall I tell you instead how one will die? Your dearest Jane," and he makes her lovely name sound like poison, "labors in an isolate place: she will not die early, when the bombs strike; she will not die of the radiation sickness. She will live long enough to wish that she had been of that fortunate number: she will live long enough to suffer hollow-bellied starvation, and all the savagery which it will fuel. She will live long enough to see her world, her civilization, turned to ash. She will live long enough to see all her work ruined and undone, and when she at last comes to this place, dear brother—when she comes here, will you tell her that you might have saved her? Will you tell her that in the end, your vaunted courage failed—"

Thor roared with fury and stepped towards him—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that's really the end of this one, SORRY SORRY SORRY! Next one coming soon? *hides from pelting rocks* With thanks to Dira for help and all of you for lovely fb! <3


	11. Bruce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It felt like a grad school headache coming, like he'd been in the lab for four days straight forgetting to sleep or eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait after the cliffhanger! I had this one almost ready to go and then I realized I was totally in the wrong POV and this needed to be Bruce instead. :D

Bruce sat up slowly. He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. Natasha was already on her feet somehow, leaning against a pile of rubble, talking into her communicator: "SHIELD, do you copy? Check for some kind of triggering device concealed on Stark's jet, unlock code _THOR_ : possible false alarm. Look in the beer fridge. This is Agent Romanoff, over. _"_

It was broad daylight, a hot summer day. There were weeds growing up between the broken stones. There were crumpled potato chip bags and empty soda bottles labeled in Italian on the ground. The walls of the amphitheater rose up around them on all sides.

"Stop wasting time!" Loki snarled. "Call Barton and find out where he is, I need the body _now._ " 

Bruce lifted his head and squinted towards him. It was hard to make Loki out: he was a silhouette on one knee, holding something between his hands without touching it, a blazing golden cloud roughly the size of a basketball. It was crackling with electricity, thin currents cascading over Loki's hands—Bruce could smell his skin burning.

Bruce had to stop looking at him and put his head between his knees for a minute. It felt like a grad school headache coming, like he'd been in the lab for four days straight forgetting to sleep or eat. 

"Don't waste _time?_ " Steve said thickly. He was slumped down on his knees. He looked even worse than Bruce felt: skin clammy-pale and sweating, and there was a trickle of blood coming from his nose. He wiped it away with the back of one hand, leaving a smear across his cheek. "Natasha, you buy that was a bluff?" 

"Ninety percent and rising, since he doesn't care about stopping it now," she said. "Convincing Thor had to be easier than rigging all the nuclear weapons in the world." 

"You son of a bitch," Tony said, in a vaguely impressed tone, muffled. He hadn't gotten up off the ground; he'd just rolled over onto his face. He seemed to be hugging the planet. "So hey, guys, we went to Hell and back, huh? I think that officially makes us the coolest superhero team in the book." 

It was a good try, but his voice wobbled a little, towards the end. "More like the stupidest," Steve said, grimly. 

Bruce flinched. He didn't know what the others had seen, down there. Their families, probably. Friends. He laced his hands over the back of his neck and pulled in again, trying to breathe. He'd even had warning. He'd known he was going to see his dead. He'd been ready. Yeah. 

He'd thought it would even be nice to get to see his mom again. He only had a couple of photos, old Polaroids he'd hidden in a coloring book the day after she'd died. His dad had taken down all the rest, ripped them out of the photo albums and the frames around the house, while he'd still been telling people she'd run off with someone. He'd burned them along with her body the day before the police had finally come to arrest him. 

Bruce had thought he'd get to see her, talk to her. Loki had made it sound like that. Their dead would hide them. Their dead would help get them through. 

Well, that had been true, Bruce guessed. He'd gotten to see his mom again. They'd held hands. She'd told him she loved him. She hadn't said she was proud of him. She'd walked with him the four blocks to his kindergarten, stood waving to him on the sidewalk. And then he'd gone inside, and he'd met the rest of his dead. All of them. 

He wiped his face. It was wet. He knew—he'd known—how many people he'd killed. A therapist would probably tell him it was stupid for any number of reasons, but he read about them. He'd started after Harlem. He'd found a thrown-out paper in the trash while scrounging for soda cans, with the other guy's face on it, and he'd taken it back to the abandoned warehouse he was sleeping in. He'd read it by the light of the streetlamp outside the window, not the blaring sensational articles but the obituaries: one face after another, smiling photos from yearbooks and weddings and graduations, until he'd known all their names. Then he'd crept out and broken into a nearby gang squat and stolen a gun, and he'd tried to make sure it couldn't happen again. 

When that hadn't worked, he'd kept on reading. It had felt like the least he could do. For penance, for control; maybe both. He had a book: he wrote their names down, clipped their photos. Sometimes he looked them up on Facebook. 

So he'd recognized them. All those faces all around him, a silent, slow-moving crowd, hiding him in their midst. They'd walked with him a long, long time. He got the feeling they'd covered about half the ground of the whole trip for the team. Really useful. He'd helped a lot, him and his dead. He wondered what they'd thought about it. None of them had talked to him. They'd just walked with him in silence, none of them less than an arm's-length away, until finally they stopped and let him out onto the cliffside, with the Hulk nowhere to be seen. 

He'd thought maybe that was it, when the Hulk hadn't been there. The Hulk didn't have dead. So Bruce had thought maybe that could be it, maybe the Hulk was lost. Maybe he _could_ finally make an end of it. But apparently not even the guardians of the dead could stop Hulk. He'd climbed up out of the canyon some nameless amount of time after Loki and Steve had gone, and he'd looked at them all huddled in their corners and demanded, "Where Captain? Where Loki? Where Thor?" 

Bruce hadn't answered; neither had Tony or Natasha. They'd been opened up so wide for Loki to go rummaging around in them and yank out the soft parts, and all Bruce had been able to do was huddle in over himself, trying to protect the gaping hole. "Where Captain?" Hulk had said again, and prodded Bruce's arm with one thick finger until Bruce fell over. Then he'd gone and prodded Tony, and then he'd gone and prodded Natasha, and then he'd kept going around and around to all three of them, over and over, until it started to be the lesser evil to pull their guts back inside their own skins, to start to think and talk again. 

They'd only caught up with Steve and Loki because of him; they'd all only made it back because of him. Was that good enough to make up for all the rest? Was anything the Hulk could do enough? It didn't seem like it could be. 

Bruce looked up at Loki, his hands still full of blazing light. He was managing to contain it somehow, to squeeze it down into a smaller golden orb. It threw a harsh white light up onto his face: he looked even worse than Steve, blood trickling from both nostrils, staining his lips and teeth, another trickle running down his neck from one ear. There were bruises on his jaw, and a deep red stain seeping through his leather armor, along his side. 

"Is it going to be worth it?" Bruce asked him. Loki jerked his eyes away from the orb and looked at him. "When the pricetag comes due," Bruce said to him, "is it going to be worth it?" 

Loki stared back at him, bloodshot and bloody, eyes almost solid green with the pupils shrunk down to dots in the glare. "Yes," he said. 

Bruce nodded a little, wearily. He wondered what it would be like, to have that kind of certainty. Seemed like it would be nice. 

"Says you." Steve grabbed on to a worn stone bench near him and dragged himself up to his feet. He pointed at Loki. "So we're clear, mister, we're going to be having a _long_ conversation about the consequences you just roped us into." 

Loki had gotten the orb carefully into one hand, fingers curled around it. He spat blood on the ground and wiped his face with his free arm. "I'll spend the next decade teaching you the elementary principles of entropic backwash if you like," he snapped, " _after_ your damned archer has brought me my brother's body back. He was supposed to be here by now." 

"Yeah, about that," Clint said, stepping into view at the top of the stairs, arrow nocked and ready, his face unsmiling: he was looking at Loki. "There's been a change of plans."

Loki's head turned towards him slow. He uncoiled to his feet, still holding the orb in his hand, and cocked his head like a bird. Well. Like a velociraptor. " _Where is Thor?_ "

"Safe where I left him," Clint said. "Nowhere near here."

"What?" Tony said, wobbling drunkenly as he got back up onto his feet. "Barton, you have any idea what we just went through to pull this off? What happened to the plan? It was a good plan! Hold off Asgard, bring Thor here to meet us? What was wrong with that?"

Clint didn't shift his ground. "I got fresh intel," he said flatly. "I made a new call." 

"You _idiot_ ," Loki snarled. "His spirit cannot long be kept in the world without the anchor of his body: if I cannot reunite them soon, this will all have been for naught."

"That's the idea," Clint said. 

Loki stopped. His chest was rising and falling. Bruce pulled himself slowly to his feet and eased further back out of the line of fire. His head started to thump again, pressure-cooker pain. 

After a moment, Loki said, very softly, "I will cut off your eyelids for this, Barton, and make you watch as I slice apart one after another the sinews of your arms, as I unravel every scrap of red muscle, until you gaze lidless upon your bare and bloody claws of bone—"

Clint pulled the arrow a little further. "Looks like your hands are pretty full right now. You sure you want to keep talking?" 

"Oh, I'll have them free soon enough," Loki said, murder-soft. "Wherever you have hidden Thor, I _will_ find him, and then—" He stopped. 

"You will not." A tall, dark-haired woman had stepped up the hill and next to Clint: Asgardian, from the armor. She looked down at the golden blaze of light in Loki's hand, and her face tightened with anger. "Thor's remains are safe from all your black sorcery, Loki." 

Loki stood there holding the orb between his hands protectively back against his chest, staring up at her. "Sif, listen to me," he said, after a moment, his voice roped back, even and calm as though he hadn't just been describing Clint's vivisection. "You don't understand, I can bring him _back_ —"

"I will hear nothing you have to say, Loki," Sif said. "I understand well enough your purpose. How many enemies have you made, in your vicious schemes? How many times have you hidden behind the shield of Thor's arm and his love for you? But too late did you remember to regret his death." She spat on the ground towards him. "I will not permit you to corrupt his spirit, and call down retribution on all the world." 

"That's not true," Loki said. He was trying for calm, but it wasn't working all that great. Bruce could hear the fault lines in his voice, and the tendons were standing out on his arms and neck. "Sif, stop and think. You know you have not studied the laws of seith, of the balance which must be preserved, as I have. There are ways to counteract, to redirect the weight of—" 

"Liar," she said coldly. "Do not think to deceive me with this pretense, Loki: you would burn down Yggdrasil for your own need, and care nothing what pain and sorrow you brought to others." She stepped down the stairs, raising her sword. "Enough! Release Thor's spirit now, that it may fly back to Valhalla by the swiftest road! Or I swear by the Norns I will cleave you to bone with my own hand."

Down came the curtain. "You stupid _whore_!" Loki snarled at her, backing away in a crouch. "All your life you've spent at war, pretending to be a man, hoping one day Thor's favor would glance upon you at last. Do they laugh behind your back, that he seeks Midgard now so often? Tell me, Lady Sif, how deep does it gall you that his passion should have lighted upon a mortal woman, a fragile creature not even a warrior, weak and soft and yielding?"

Sif flushed. "Less than it galls _you_ , I think," she said. 

"Hang on a second, _both_ of you," Steve said, stepping forward, trying to put himself between them. It didn't look to Bruce like the best place to be right now. "Look, Lady Sif, Thor's our friend and our ally. He died helping us and protecting this planet. I don't know what the cost is going to be for bringing him back, and maybe it might be more than he'd want us to pay. But there _is_ a price we're willing to pay."

"Steve," Clint said, from the top of the stairs, "Odin sent them."

"What?" Steve said. 

Sif jerked her head towards Clint. "As your friend says. The Allfather himself sent us to bar Loki from this act," she said. "To bring fallen Thor home, and bar this _slaugir_ from restoring him to life." 

"Wait," Steve said. "Thor's _dad_ —" 

"Would rather see his son dead, than owe his life to an act of power beyond his own grasp!" Loki said. "Odin does not dare seek the land of the dead; that any other should have done it, that I, his despised and cast-off son, should have done it, his glory cannot bear—"

"Okay," Tony said, "so that's—not completely implausible, actually; can I just ask," he turned and pointed at Sif, "have you actually _known_ anyone who got brought back from the dead? Or are you going on hearsay—"

Sif was yelling at Loki instead. "Fool!" Sif said. "You, who turned your hand against him, and you think you love him better than we do who were his friends and his kin? You do him no honor, nor care to." 

"More than _you_ ," Loki hissed, "who had not the courage to seek his return, only to waylay me to prevent it with these pathetic sniveling excuses, all to cover your own shrinking cowardice—" 

"Are you kidding me?" Steve said to Tony, catching him by the arm and swinging him around. "You need to talk to someone who stepped on a landmine to figure out it's not a good idea?"

"No, I need to talk to someone who's going to give me more than oogedy boogedy, forbidden knowledge, let your friend die," Tony snapped, wiggling his fingers in Steve's face. 

"He's already dead!" Steve said. "We shouldn't have gone down there in the first place." 

"I didn't hear you voting no beforehand," Tony said. 

"Yeah, well," Steve said, "I hadn't been there. Tony, _Thor_ didn't want us to bring him back."

"He also had a hug-fest with Loki and tried to feed us an elk so we'd _die_ and stay with him," Tony said. "I've got some questions about the state of his judgement."

Bruce backed away a little further. The noise was loud and rising fast, all four of them yelling furiously back and forth, and then he noticed: Natasha had slipped around the back and was getting into position behind Loki—behind his right arm, specifically. The one holding the orb. Bruce saw her trade a quick glance with Clint, who gave her a nod and took aim. They were going to try and make Loki drop—it. Thor's soul. 

The pain hit like a truck, all of a sudden. Bruce pressed the heels of his hands to his head. He could barely breathe. Was this a migraine? He felt like his skull was going to crack open from inside like a melon. 

"Guys," he heard Natasha say, distantly. " _Guys!_ " 

The noise and the yelling stopped, abruptly. Bruce couldn't unfold enough to look up, but he could hear Natasha coming slowly closer. "Bruce," she said, low, "are you all right?" 

"Hey pal," he heard Tony say. "It's okay, Mommy and Daddy will stop fighting—" 

" _Tony_ ," Steve said, and Bruce saw Natasha's shadow on the ground make a chopping motion with her hand. 

"Bruce?" she said quietly, "can I get you—"

But in the quiet, Bruce could hear better: he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, hear the blood rushing in his veins, and he could hear—"No," he said. "No."

"Okay," she said, misunderstanding, spreading her hands wide where he could see them. 

"You don't understand," he said, struggling, oh God he had to warn them. "Natasha, you don't understand, it's not me. It's not me." 

"What?" she said. "Bruce, I don't—"

"He's coming," Bruce said. "He wants to come—" 

_Now!_ _Hulk come now!_

It was like trying to hang on to a child by the arm that was stamping and thrashing wildly against his grip, and suddenly his hold slipped and he was going over: changing, body shuddering up and crashing through a half-fallen archway, but he wasn't going away. He was still there: he was _still there_ , but he wasn't in charge anymore, and then the Hulk slammed both his fists down on the ground and said, "Hulk want Thor _back_!"

Natasha flung herself back from him, they all did, except Loki: Loki dived across the amphitheater, rolling protectively around the golden orb, and he came up to his feet by Hulk's side and took a step behind him. 

"Thor's in here," he said. "Don't let them make me let go of him. We need to get this to his body."

"No let go," Hulk agreed. 

Bruce could hear it, every word. He could see Loki looking back at the others, see the blood still slicked across his satisfied, feral grin. "Well," he said softly, "would you all like to pay in advance, then? Shall we see how much destruction you can force the Hulk and myself to create, before you deliver Thor's body to us?" 

_No. No. No._

And he couldn't even scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	12. Clint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What the _hell_ ," Clint said, under his breath. He wasn't sure what part of this was more horrifying: the idea that the Hulk could just pop out whenever he wanted, or the Hulk being on Loki's side under any circumstances whatsoever. What had _happened_ down there?

"What the _hell_ ," Clint said, under his breath. He wasn't sure what part of this was more horrifying: the idea that the Hulk could just pop out whenever he wanted, or the Hulk being on Loki's side under any circumstances whatsoever. The Hulk's favorite playtime activity was bashing Loki into any and all available hard surfaces whenever Loki was too slow to get out of grabbing distance. What had _happened_ down there?

"Oh, I knew storytelling hour was going to come back to bite us in the ass," Tony said.

"Hulk," Steve said, putting out a hand, "Hulk, listen, Thor wouldn't want this—"

"Hulk not care!" Hulk said. "Hulk save Thor." He scowled up at Clint. "Hawk bring Thor now!"

" _Barton, Romanoff,"_ Fury's voice came over the line. " _Talk to me. We need to make a call here before it makes itself_." 

Clint swallowed. It wasn't easy to say while looking into the Hulk's face, but—"No deal," he said into his comm. "From what Sif's said, we'd be writing Loki a blank check to cash against the whole goddamn planet."

" _Romanoff?_ "

She glanced up at him from the amphitheater floor, and she shook her head just a little. _"We can't contain the two of them together,"_ she said into the comm. _"The Hulk's power with Loki driving? He aims the Hulk at downtown Naples, and he will, we'll have ten thousand civilian casualties in an hour. Or more."_

"Shit," Clint said, flexing his hand around the bow grip. She wasn't wrong. Something about it bothered him anyway, something about the way her voice sounded, but he didn't have an answer to that. Nobody did. 

Fury was silent a moment. " _Tell Loki he gets the body in ten hours_ ," Fury said finally. " _If you have an opportunity to set Thor's spirit loose before it gets there, use it. But make damn sure you don't miss."_

Clint didn't bother answering that one. He was busy watching Natasha raising her hands, down on the amphitheater floor, talking Hulk down, promising him the body would get there soon. It was right, except for how it was all wrong. She was held together by string. They all were, he was starting to be pretty sure, maybe even Loki: there wasn't a lot of visible damage showing, but they were all of them fucked up. How fucked up and in what ways, he didn't know, but he knew he needed to figure it out _now_. 

Except he was out of time to do that, because Loki asked, coldly suspicious, "How long until they get here, Agent Romanoff?" He was still making sure to stay near the Hulk.

"Ten hours," Natasha said. 

And then Sif said, "Never," and Loki stiffened where he stood. 

Clint jerked his head towards her. She glanced back up the slope of the stairs at him: her face was hard. "I underestimated you and yours once, archer; do you think we are to be fooled _twice_?" She raised her blade in front of her face, and Clint could see her reflection shimmer and fade out, replaced by one of the Valkyries. "Hlokk, you have found the prince?" 

"Yes, Lady Sif," the woman in the sword said. "We have the flying mortal fortress secured: they will surrender him to us, or we will burn it in the air with him aboard, and let it be his death-ship." 

Clint said, "SHIELD, did you get—"

" _Yes_ ," Hill said in his ear. " _We're scanning for intruders—_ " She paused, just a beat too long. Clint swore even before she said, " _Two of them just showed up in mission control._ "

Sif nodded, and lowered her blade. "And as for this mindless beast," she said to Loki, with a jerk of her chin at the Hulk, "if you should turn him against innocent mortals, we will lend our aid to bring him down, in memory of the dead. But not even to spare their lives will we permit you to contaminate Thor's very soul." 

Loki was very still, holding the orb cupped in both his hands, close to his body, staring at her. Hulk frowned darkly and stamped his foot. "Hulk want Thor!" he said.

Sif snorted. "You are well matched," she said to Loki. "Both of you like children clamoring for a toy refused you." 

"You're not exactly impressing me by threatening to set it on fire if you don't get your way, either!" Steve said, stepping towards Sif. "This doesn't have to turn into a fight. We all need to take a step back and actually talk about this—"

"No," Loki said. "No, I think the Lady Sif is done with words, is she not?" He stepped back from them all. There was a thin smile on his face, trembling at the corners. "Words have so little value. Words have so little weight, compared with deeds." 

"For once, Liesmith, you speak truly," Sif said. "Thor shall have his burning within the hour. Think not to flee: even should you escape, there shall be no place where you can hide his spirit, where you can bind it for long." 

Loki's smile widened. "Ah, Sif," he said. "But there is one." 

She frowned. 

Clint personally felt there weren't many situations involving Loki that couldn't be improved by shooting him at some point, but this one was enough of a mess he hadn't picked out the right moment to let fly. Still, he had kept tracking Loki the entire time down the arrow shaft, straight to the shining gleam of crazy in his eye, so he knew what Loki was doing as soon as Loki moved: the muscles that clenched, the shift in his balance, all the little physical tells. 

The problem was, he knew with his eyes, but he didn't understand with his head, so he didn't let the arrow go. He didn't let the arrow go, and then it was too late: Sif screamed and leaped at Loki, as Loki raised the orb to his mouth and pressed it in and _swallowed_ , the golden gleam shining through the skin of his face and down his throat, Clint tracking it helpless with the arrowhead the whole way, until it slid down into Loki's chest and glowed out and was gone. 

Loki stood swaying a moment, and then he dropped to his knees, his whole body shuddering. 

Sif skidded to a halt standing over him, her sword raised, horrified. She stared down at him a moment, chest heaving, and then her face tightened in rage. "So be it," she snarled. "I will release you _both_." She pulled back the sword. 

Hulk grabbed her in one hand and threw her straight across the amphitheater, through the wall and into the woods on the other side. The wall collapsed into a cloud of dust. A few trees fell down after it. After a moment, another chunk of wall slid into the hole too. Nobody said anything. They were all staring at Loki. 

"Did he just _eat_ Thor?" Tony said finally. 

Next to him, Steve was gawking. 

" _Barton, tell me what the hell's happening down there_ ," Fury said in his ear. _"Our video pickup didn't get a damn thing."_

"I have no fucking idea, sir," Clint said, and meant it. He glanced down at Natasha, who looked back and just shook her head, eyes wide. 

Hulk was frowning down at Loki, who was still bent over on his knees. He reached down and prodded Loki's shoulder. "Where Thor?" 

Loki started laughing shrill and sharp-edged. He put out a hand and braced himself against the Hulk's leg and lurched up to his feet, staggering. "Well," he said, "as Sif would not provide Thor's body, I had to find an alternative. No mortal shell would do, so—"

"So you just _swallowed_ him?" Steve said. 

"Why does this not strike me as the best possible idea?" Tony said. 

Loki pressed a fist to his mouth and stifled something that sounded like a panicky giggle. "Oh no, it's a wonderful idea," he said. Sif staggered out of the rubble, dusty and banged-up, and he looked at her. "Do you not agree, Sif? Or perhaps would you like to reconsider?" 

"You are mad!" she said, panting. "Release him, Loki, even you cannot mean to do this—"

"Do you think so?" he said. "Are you willing to wager Thor's soul on it?" She stopped and stared at him. Loki laughed again. It wasn't a nice sound. 

"You would destroy both him and yourself!" Sif said. "You will not do this. I will not believe it, Loki. You will not cast away your own existence." 

"Not destruction, surely," Loki said. "It cannot be called that." 

"So what _can_ it be called?" Tony said. "Catch up the rest of the class, here." 

The rest of the Avengers were closing in a loose half-circle around Loki and Hulk, who was rubbing his head and muttering to himself, "No! Want _Thor_ ," almost plaintively. Clint slung his bow to his back and jumped for the wall near him, to haul himself up and get a clearer view, keep his line of sight clear to Loki's head. Whatever the hell Loki had decided to pull now, it was obviously a prime grade of insanity even for him, and the fallout from that couldn't be good. 

"Why don't we call it dissolution," Loki said, spreading his arms. There was something weird about him, something wrong, and in a second Clint figured it out: he was shedding light, just a little, enough to make his shadow disappear. "A body is not meant to contain two spirits. If Thor's spirit is not given its own home, in time our souls will—cease to be, as separate things. Portions of each will be lost. Others will merge." Loki smiled at Sif brilliantly. "A little more corruption of Thor's soul, I think, than merely its restoration to his own body." 

She had stopped just out of arm's reach of the Hulk, who was still scowling at her; her legs were tense like she wanted to take another shot at Loki anyway. "You will both be lost," she said. "Gone utterly, beyond even death: Loki, you will _not_." 

"Tell me," Loki said softly, "do _you_ expect there to be a seat waiting for me in the golden halls of Valhalla, when my days are ended?" 

Sif's face said pretty clearly she didn't, even at this distance. Clint couldn't exactly blame her, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to sell a poker face on that one himself. But Loki could read it just as well as he could: he laughed. "So, Lady Sif," he said. "Which of us do you think has more to lose?" 

Half an hour later, they were on Stark's plane, heading for a rendezvous with the Helicarrier over the Atlantic: over an oceanic trench, if Clint knew Fury at all. If they went down, they'd go down deep, deep enough to bury even gods. 

Loki was in a window seat huddled in on his glowy self with his eyes shut. He'd demanded Bruce sit next to him, and Bruce hadn't argued about it, because he hadn't said anything since shifting back down out of the Hulk. He'd just thrown up, twice. Sif was sitting across the plane from them, watching with her sword out across her knees. Steve had planted himself in between the camps and was bent over leaning on his knees, staring at the floor, not talking to anyone. Meanwhile Tony was pacing the open floor in front of the bar with his third Scotch in fifteen minutes in his hand, and hadn't _stopped_ talking, to anyone in range; at this point he was lecturing one of Clint's guys on molecular interpersonal dynamics or something.

Clint made sure he had six guys on Loki, then gave everything a look over to see if there was anything else he could do to make this op less fucked—answer: no—and went to figure out what was wrong with Natasha, because whatever was wrong with her was the same thing that was wrong with his entire team. She was sitting alone and near the front of the plane, her hand balled up against her lips, looking out the window. 

She didn't glance up as he sat down next to her. "Talk to me," he said. 

She shook her head, but she wasn't saying no. She was asking for time. Clint tipped his head back against the seat and shut his eyes for a minute. She'd give him what he needed, before he needed it: she'd just promised as much. He counted memories while he waited for her: Budapest, Khvosh Robat, Dak Sul, Kyoto, Joma on down, all the places she'd saved his life, the places he'd saved hers. He didn't know if he wanted to hear what she was going to say, what Loki had done to her in a place that didn't exist. 

The plane was out over the water before she spoke. "It's not just Bruce," she said. "We came back different." 

"Yeah," Clint said. 

She nodded a little. "All of us," she said. "I don't know how yet, but—" She stopped. 

"Sif said that no one could take that trip and come back without paying," Clint said. "Do you know what the price is going to be, Natasha?" 

"It's more than that," she said. She reached down to her boot and took something out and handed it to him: half of the explosives he'd given her, before she'd headed down below. "I used the other half, down there," she said. "They were the only weapon I could bring. Loki said gifts come through, sometimes. I guess they came back with me, too."

"Glad they came in handy," he said. The explosives looked different, somehow. The silver casings didn't catch the light the way they should have. He touched one with a thumb; his skin tingled. 

"I don't know for sure," Natasha said, "But I think—I think those will do very bad things now." 

He held them out to her, but she shook her head a little. 

"Keep them. For special occasions." She smiled a little. "I want them in hands with very good aim."

Clint nodded, after a moment. Natasha looked out the window again while he stowed them away, separated in his case from the regular arrowheads and their payloads, in the secret compartment behind the thumbprint lock. When he was done she said, "We came back, too. We came back different. Clint, I don't think we're just going to pay. I think we _are_ the price."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All fb loved, here or on [lj](http://astolat.livejournal.com) or [tumblr](http://astolat.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/intimations)! ♥


	13. Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did anyone sleep when you'd just broken the laws of the universe?

Night caught up to them a few hours out of Naples. Natasha and Clint were already asleep up front with their heads tipped against each other, good little soldiers grabbing some shut-eye while they could. Tony had no idea how. How did anyone sleep when you'd just broken the laws of the universe? Absolutely nothing about the last however many days it had been—"Jarvis, what day is it?" "Thursday, sir."—nothing about the last two days made any sense—wait. 

"What do you mean, Thursday?" Tony said. "We had to have been down there more than two days." 

"Yes, sir. It's the nineteenth," Jarvis said. 

"We weren't gone _nine_ days either," Tony said. 

"Three days to climb down Yggdrasil," Loki said, from his window seat tucked safely on the other side of Bruce. He was slouched low with his legs stretched out, staring out the window at the line where the dark was creeping steadily ahead of the jet. He didn't look around. "Then we came back on the next Thursday."

"What? What's special about—nevermind," Tony said, because he didn't want Loki to tell him that they had come back on _Thor's day_ , as though Thor, his drinking buddy who occasionally left dirty socks around Stark Tower, actually had a day all to himself in the week in some way that was meaningful other than a bunch of Vikings having been impressed by his very large hammer a thousand years ago, which was frankly bad enough. 

Although—"Hey," Tony said, "so why don't you have a day?" 

Sif snorted from her seat; she hadn't taken her eyes off Loki for a second since they'd gotten on board. "He lost it."

Loki shot her an annoyed look. "I _gave_ it to my mother."

"Because otherwise Ghrostig was going to kill you," Sif said. 

"How did your giving it away stop him, exactly?" Tony said. 

"He'd bargained for the right to kill me," Loki said. "He agreed to do it on the third Lokday after. As that's never come, he's never had the right." 

"Bargained with who, exactly?" Tony said.

"Me," Loki said. 

"You traded someone the right to kill you?" Tony said. 

Loki shrugged. "Ghrostig was a great sorcerer," he said. "He traded me his magic for it."

"After you nearly started a blood feud with his entire clan," Sif said. "In his _house_." 

"Oh, I beg your pardon," Loki said. "As _I_ recall, we were sent there in the first place to apologize for the fight you started with that nephew of his—"

"He tried to insult my virtue!" Sif said. 

"From a diplomatic standpoint, you could have stopped after beating him senseless, instead of taking his manhood and throwing it to the pigs," Loki said. "The pigs, I might add, that had been meant for Ghrostig's welcome feast." 

"I could _not_ have," Sif said, while Tony made a strong mental note never ever ever to make any remark to an Asgardian woman that by any possible stretch of the imagination could be construed as insulting her virtue. "Anyway you're the one who made it into a song. And then you sang it to him in his own hall!" 

"Don't even pretend you weren't delighted," Loki said. "I've heard you humming it in your bath."

Sif turned pink and turned to look out the window instead of at him. Loki smirked and settled back into his seat, humming something softly himself—the song in question, Tony was willing to bet. It occurred to him this had to be a side hazard of immortality: you lived long enough with people, you ended up sharing half your backstory, even if both of you wanted to strangle each other at any given point in time. If he lived a thousand years, would he end up hanging out with Reed Richards? Tony shuddered. No, and also, horrifying even as a mental image. 

At least it ratcheted the tension down by a factor of, oh, 0.015%, which in absolute terms was still a palpable amount. Sif's grip on her sword eased up a little. The SHIELD agents at their posts around the jet unbent at least a couple of millimeters. Loki even closed his eyes. 

The sun rolled on away from them, and the captain turned down the interior lights. Tony went back to pacing by the bar while everyone else got comfortable. He thought about getting the suit on—he could step outside, maybe do some loops. 

"If I may, sir," Jarvis said, "you do have several personal messages waiting. Would you like to listen to them?" 

"Just sum it up for me," Tony said. "On a scale of one to ten, how much trouble am I in when Pepper gets hold of me?"

"I'm afraid I can't count that high, sir."

"About what I thought," Tony said. "How do you think the just got back from hell card will play?"

"Not very well." 

Wow, he wanted to be home being yelled at right now. He shut his eyes and imagined Pepper glaring at him—where was she, it was afternoon in California, she was in some boring meeting with boring people in boring suits who were far less important than he was, and if he were anywhere near there he would walk right in and interrupt all of them and grab her by the hand and—

"Oh my God, Tony," Pepper said, and he opened his eyes and saw her standing up from a chair at the end of a long table with California sky and sunshine behind her, her face stricken and her hand reaching out to him, even though the plane windows were still on either side of him, dark ovals looking out onto the night. Then the sides of the plane rushed forward and swallowed her and the conference room, and he staggered one step backwards and sat down on the floor hard as he _thumped_ back into himself. 

He sat frozen, not daring to move. "That was not okay," he said. All the SHIELD agents were staring down at him in confusion, and Steve was looking around from his seat up front. 

Jarvis said in his earpiece, "Miss Potts is calling, sir," and Tony did _not_ want to talk to Pepper, he did _not_ want Pepper to tell him she'd just seen him standing impossibly in a room in California. He put up a hand cautiously to feel over himself where the thump had landed, and then he was ripping frantically at his shirt, tearing it off over his head— 

"Tony, what are you—" Steve was saying, there and gripping his arm, and then he saw it too and stopped. 

Tony stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar, at the broken circle of light glowing from beneath his skin. It was almost like when he was wearing a thin t-shirt over the arc reactor. Almost, not entirely. Minor difference. He touched it carefully with his fingers. White light spilled against his hand. No heat. He pressed down. He couldn't feel anything underneath, no metal. He pressed harder, fingers digging into his skin, trying to get a hold of _something_ , something that he could get _out_ — 

"Hey," Steve said, his grip tightening, pulling Tony's hand back from his chest. "Tony, ease up—"

Tony tried to yank free. "Stop worrying about me," he said. "Start worrying about _you_." He gave Steve a hard shove with his other hand, challenging: when in doubt, attack, and tossing it back and forth with Steve beat thinking about what hadn't, what couldn't possibly have happened, what couldn't _be_ happening, and if Tony didn't look at it maybe it would go away, since that would be as rational as the reverse—

"What?" Steve said. 

"You made it all the way up to Valhalla when none of us could even walk," Tony said. "What did _you_ bring back? Who did you see in there?" 

"I saw—" Steve stopped and let go of him, uncertainty crossing his face, and said, "I saw—" and then Tony was sorry, very very fucking sorry he had asked, because he could have done without seeing anyone in the entire world look like that, much less Steve. 

"Hey," he said, reaching out. Steve took a step back, knocked away Tony's hand automatically—at least, Tony was pretty sure it was automatic; it didn't look like there was any room in Steve's head for conscious thought right now. 

"Peggy," Steve said. "I saw— _Peggy_." 

"Right, okay," Tony said, cautiously; his girl, Steve called her, when he'd talk about her, when he'd talk about anyone at all—her, and Bucky, and—

"Her name was Peggy Carter," Steve said. "She had—oh my God. Oh my God, I don't—" He was breathing quick, his chest working, and he was backing away another step. "I don't remember." 

"Cap!" Tony said. "Focus, here, you're remembering fine. Peggy Carter—"

Steve shoved him back hard. "I remember _her!_ " he yelled, which wasn't incredibly illuminating. 

"Steve," Natasha said, there on his other side. She was up; Clint was too, staying back towards the front of the plane, bow in his hand, watching all of them like they were time bombs set to go off. Sif had stood, wary, and even Bruce was sitting up again, craned around from his seat and watching dully. 

"She had dark hair," Steve said. He doubled up his fists and pressed them to his face. "She was a British officer, she liked martinis, she liked to dance, she—oh my God." 

"It's okay," Natasha said, calm and level. "There are a lot of ways to get memories back. What are you missing?"

Steve dropped his hands from his face. He looked like somebody had hollowed him out. "Me," he said. "I'm missing—me. What I felt. How I loved—" His voice broke. He stopped for a moment, his throat working. "I remember everything about her," he said. "Everything. It just doesn't—it doesn't matter anymore. _I don't miss her._ I don't miss—Jesus, I don't miss— _Bucky_ —"

Tony was already reaching over the bar and getting a bottle, first one in reach—Wild Turkey—and Steve took it as soon as he'd cracked it open and started drinking it straight, head tipped back to swallow faster, to let it run down his throat. Tony set up the Goldschlager and the Maker's Mark next in line and handed off to Natasha, who was breaking out some undoubtedly not-illegal-because-it-doesn't-officially-exist-yet additive from one of her pockets, and then he left Steve working on the fastest blind drunk in the history of the world and went straight for Loki. 

Loki hadn't even twitched the whole time. He was still in his seat with his head tipped back. The glow had faded, enough that now it mostly just illuminated the bruises and the bloodstains he hadn't bothered to wipe off his face. "You got what you wanted, screw everything, everyone else," Tony said. "Not a surprise. But let me spell this out for you, Frosty: when this is done and we've got Thor back, you're going to help us clean up the mess, or I _will_ find a way to make you pay." 

Loki didn't answer, didn't move, and right now Tony didn't give a shit how bad an idea this was: he leaned in and slapped Loki as hard as he could, even though his whole hand throbbed with the impact. "Are you _listening?_ " he snapped. "I'll break out the repulsors if I have—" 

Loki stirred and opened his eyes and looked up at him, and Tony stopped, because it wasn't Loki at all.

"Stark?" Thor said, in Loki's voice, out of Loki's face. Across the plane, Sif's head whipped around like it was on a rubber band. 

Thor looked down at his hands, his arms, around himself; then he pushed himself up out of the seat. Tony stared up at him. Thor stared back. Tony put out a finger and poked Thor in his borrowed chest. 

"What are you doing?" Thor said. 

"—I have no idea, actually," Tony said. "Is, uh, is Loki in there with you?" 

"Yes," Thor said, after a moment. "But he hides himself from me—he flees within, into dark corners of his mind. I cannot speak with him, nor hear his voice." He looked at his hands again and then pushed himself up from the seat. 

"Like a rat hiding in sewers," Sif said, reaching an arm out; he gripped it. "Thor—oh, Thor, forgive me—" 

Thor took her by the shoulders. Tony had to shut his eyes and shake his head a little, because it was a trip and a half to see Thor's smile on Loki's mouth: warm and open, under clear eyes: and therefore completely wrong. "Sif, my dear friend. Do not reproach yourself. You could not have dreamed the lengths to which Loki's madness would drive him."

"Yet by my failure you have been reft from the peace of Valhalla, which you had earned," Sif said. She was crying. 

"Can we just establish by that you mean, he's _not dead anymore_ ," Tony said, because this whole whoo-hoo, endless peace in heaven thing was really starting to get on his nerves. "And speaking as someone who was actually _there_ , it wasn't all that great unless you really like elk." 

Thor reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "You did not perceive the true nature of Valhalla, for you had stolen into the hall untimely. When the glorious day comes that you walk through the doors by right, slain yet unbowed, you will better understand." 

"I'll take a long raincheck on that, thanks," Tony said. 

Thor laughed, the boom of it nothing like Loki's laugh, even though the pitch was off. "Yet neither do I reproach you," he said. "For your quest was a valiant one, and your courage worth honoring." His voice gentled. "I only fear that you shall find you all have paid too great a price for my return."

Tony looked at Bruce: he'd gotten up from his seat and backed off, and was watching them with his hands doing vague things to each other and haunted eyes; Steve was already halfway down the second bottle and going strong. There was something impossible living in Tony's chest and he didn't know what was going on with Natasha, but Clint was still standing back like he was ready to shoot any one of them if he had to, including her, and Tony was fairly certain that was because she'd told him to be. 

Well, fuck all of that. Tony shrugged. "If it didn't cost a lot, it wouldn't be worth having."

Across the plane, Clint put his hand up to his earpiece. "Copy that," he said, and looked up. 

"We have contact with the Helicarrier, sir," Jarvis said. "They've transmitted a landing path. The captain is asking for confirmation." 

"Let's get this done," Tony said. 

Steve reached the bottom of the third bottle a few minutes later and sank down in a corner of the jet with his hands over his face. He stayed there through the landing sequence, but the bender was apparently over by the time the wheels came to a stop. Tony crouched down in front of him. "I've got a lot more bottles and Natasha's got more of whatever that was," he said. 

"No," Steve said. That was all he said, and he didn't stand up, but he held out a hand and took the breathing mask from Tony. 

"How about you, pal?" Tony said to Bruce, who was staring down at his own mask. "You need to sit the rest of this one out?" 

Bruce tipped the mask over, looked at the buckles, fiddled with them. "I could, but, uh. _He_ wouldn't really go for that." He glanced up at Tony, corner of his mouth turning up. "You've been telling me all along I should try to get in touch with my, uh, other half. I guess maybe I should've listened." 

"I am in fact almost always right," Tony said. He didn't know what the hell to say. Nine years since the accident, three years of an actual life since then—which, to be fair, had to be considered far more interesting than whatever boring middle-class academic junket had been ahead of Dr. Banner not least because it included Tony in it—and after all that back to square one: except more like square negative three. 

What the hell was it going to mean for them, for the team, for the planet, if the Hulk could come out to play anytime he wanted? What _would_ the Hulk want? Judging by his track record, to destroy vast swaths of the surrounding environs of whatever place he happened to be in, which was a problem for a guy living in the middle of Manhattan. 

Bruce nodded a little, flash of a smile: he'd probably already thought about all that. He'd had time sitting inside the Hulk's skull for a while, passenger along for the ride. "I think—I think maybe on our way back, you guys should, uh. Drop me off somewhere." 

"What, like a desert island?" Tony said. 

"The thought had crossed my mind," Bruce said. 

"Not happening," Tony said. "That's not the plan." 

Bruce looked at him. "What is the plan, Tony?" he said softly. 

"The plan—" What the fuck was the plan? "—the plan," Tony said, "is once we're done here and Thor is moved back into his own place, we take Scheherazade here back with us," he jerked a thumb towards Loki, where Thor was already waiting with Sif by the door, "and anytime the big guy is in a bad mood, he gets all the storytime he wants." 

Tony paused to admire his own ingenuity. What do you know. That was an _excellent_ plan. He smirked at Bruce, who was raising an eyebrow, obviously feeling the need to express some perfunctory doubt _pro forma_ — 

"I—I don't know that it's going to be that simple, Tony," Bruce said. 

"Of course it is," Tony said. "And if Loki gets bored with his job or tries to wander off, he can discuss the terms with the Hulk." He spread his arms. "I am a genius." 

Bruce opened his mouth and then paused, a weird expression crossing his face. Tony eyed him doubtfully. Bruce blinked at him and then said, "Uh. _He_ —could go for that." 

"He could?" Tony said. "Well, yes. Of course he could." He paused. "So, what, you know what he's thinking now?" 

"It's more like—having a conversation," Bruce said, after a moment. "Inside my head. With a two year old." He paused. "It's pretty weird." 

"Yes, well, we're not used to that around here," Tony said. 

Bruce looked at him. "How about you?" 

"What about me?" Tony said. "I'm fine. Dug up a handful of childhood neuroses, nothing new there, Pepper will try to make me talk to a shrink a few times, I'll blow it off, par for the course." 

"I meant—" Bruce indicated Tony's chest, not that there was anything to see: he'd pulled on a t-shirt and a Stark Industries flight jacket, the glow wasn't showing through. 

"I was getting bored with people stealing it out of my chest anyway," Tony said. "You wouldn't believe how often that happens." 

"Uh huh," Bruce said. He looked over at the others: everyone was waiting by the door for the docking crew to finish securing the jet. Clint and Natasha already had their masks on; Thor and Sif were going commando—small things like lack of oxygen not a big problem on Asgard, Tony assumed. "What do you think this all—is going to mean?" 

"Nothing," Tony said. "Job needed doing, we did it. Some minor cleanup issues, nothing we can't handle. It's going to be fine." 

"Are you trying to be funny?" Steve said, finally looking up from the floor. He pushed himself up. 

Tony turned to him. "You want to tell me you wouldn't have traded all of this for Thor's life?" 

"I'm not talking about _me_ ," Steve said. "You don't even get it, do you? You keep joking about going to hell and back, but we _did_. We've been to the afterlife. We've seen—" He stopped and shook his head. "And you think this is it? This changes _everything_." 

"Changes everything how?" Tony said. "Cap, joking aside, we didn't actually go to the afterworld, remember? It was all some—high-on-magic acid trip that Loki took us on to do something that ended up with Thor alive again." He looked over at Thor doing his thing in Loki's body. "Well. Something again." 

Steve stared at him like _Tony_ was the one who was nuts. "You actually believe that?"

"I'm sorry, do you have another explanation that makes any sense whatsoever?" Tony said. "You think we _actually_ climbed down a giant tree, took a stroll through hell with our dead pals, fought a bunch of monsters, and had dinner in Valhalla? It was a shared hallucination. Probably Loki had to do it to piece together something he could use to revive Thor back out of our memories, some weird Asgardian thing—"

Steve laughed, a weird shocked sound. "Wow," he said. "You just can't let yourself believe in anything, can you?" 

Bruce said, "Uh, Steve—I really am pretty sure—"

"I'm not saying there was an actual tree!" Steve said. "But you seriously think that wasn't _real?_ " He looked at both of them. "We've spoken to the dead," he said. "We've been to heaven and back. We've seen—"

"What, the face of _God?_ " Tony said. 

Steve hesitated and said softly, "Something like that."

"Oh, here we go," Tony said. "Isn't this blasphemy or something?" 

"No, actually, I think blasphemy's what you're doing," Bruce said quietly. 

"Is it?" Tony looked at him. "That and heresy, I always get mixed up—"

Steve rolled his eyes. "Come on," he said, and stomped away towards the door pulling his mask on, more exasperated and less creepy fervor: mission accomplished. 

"He's not wrong, though," Bruce said, looking after him. 

"Yes, he _is_ ," Tony said. "Don't do this to me, buddy, don't you go there—"

"I don't mean about what actually happened," Bruce said. "To be honest, I don't think that matters all that much. What matters is, we changed everything already, didn't we? Something that turns all of us inside out, that's going to change everything all over again. No matter what it was."

"Doesn't mean it has to be bad," Tony said. 

"Hasn't been all that great so far," Bruce said. 

There were a couple of loud clangs below, and the jet shuddered a little. "If I may interrupt, sir, they're ready to open the door," Jarvis said. "May I suggest putting on the oxygen mask to avoid imminent suffocation?" 

"You and your nitpicking," Tony said, and yanked his mask on. 

The Valkyries were waiting for them as an escort on the landing strip, none of them with masks on, long blonde hair whipping wildly in the wind. All of them were six feet tall and endowed like Harvard, in armor that looked like it had been come out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. Tony was a big fan of the view at eye level—not that he would have said anything about it, castration-and-pigs scenario or not. There was absolutely no call for Natasha to throw him an elbow. 

Thor's body was in the carrier morgue, thankfully under a sheet: Tony didn't really need the cognitive dissonance of Thor standing there inside Loki's body and visibly on a slab at the same time. Cognitive dissonance was at maximum levels already. 

Even Thor was having a hard time of it, judging by the way he was staring down at the draped body. There wasn't a smell issue at least, despite the nine days' gap, so that was something. 

Fury circled around to the other side of the slab. He leaned forward and braced against it. "Thor," he said, "I don't suppose you can give us any idea how bad this is going to get?" 

Thor didn't look up from the shroud. "We have few tales of such journeys," he said slowly, "and but one that I know well. My father himself, it is said, when the war against the frost giants seemed lost, went in search of knowledge which he might use to defend Asgard and the Nine Realms against them: it is said he wandered the boughs of Yggdrasil seven days and seven nights, there losing his eye, and returned with the secrets of deep magic whereby he gained the victory."

"And Loki's a sorcerer too," Fury said. 

Thor nodded. "I fear in my heart what power my brother may have gained in this journey. And to what use he may put such new-found strength."

"But you can't tell for sure," Fury said. 

"Loki still hides his thoughts from me," Thor said. "But this I can tell: his rage and torment are none the less for his having gone to such lengths to win me back from death."

Steve said, slowly, "Loki talked to someone down there. His father, he said. I didn't follow it all, but—I think he said Loki was the rightful heir to Asgard. He said Odin had killed somebody, and covered it up—I don't remember the names, but Loki seemed pretty worked up about it. He nearly killed himself asking more questions." 

"Right," Fury said, folding his arms. "So we're about to get a Loki with more ammunition for his grievances, and more firepower to back them up." 

And yet again, back to doom and gloom. "Before we cue the panic, if I may point out," Tony said, "Loki didn't show off any big fireworks on the ground just now, and he had plenty of motivation. What is he going to do, go back to trying to kill Thor so he can go rescue him a second time?"

"Though he may not desire _my_ death again, that will not shield others from his hate," Thor said quietly. "But there is another way." He looked at his body. "He cannot cast me forth against my will." 

"What?" Sif said. "Thor! You cannot mean this." She seized him by the arm and turned him away from the slab. "You will be destroyed, utterly—"

He put his hand over hers. "Not destroyed," he said. "More shall remain than not: where Loki and I are alike, nothing will be lost. And where we differ—" He smiled a little. "Our spirits shall contest for that space."

"Hang on, is this supposed to be a selling point?" Tony said. "You're going to _fight_ Loki for whoever gets to hang on to each personality point? What happens if you _lose?_ " 

"Yeah, I'm—not really seeing the upside to that," Bruce said. 

"My friends," Thor said, turning to take them all in, his arms wide. "You forget, I think, that we would not fight on equal ground. I know all the joy of love, and compassion: Loki knows only the bitterness of envy and hate. I am strengthened by all of you, my friends, my kin; I have and know my rightful place. Loki has none of these things." He smiled, sadly. "By this act, I might well save _him_ , as well as prevent the evil he might do." 

"It is not worth it, Thor!" Sif said. "Though you might win a dozen struggles to each of Loki's one, still what remained, what came of such a merging, would not be truly you." 

"Is the prize not worth the cost?" Thor said. "That I might redeem Loki's spirit, and avert perhaps the consequences of his act? Surely true courage demands even such a sacrifice: I am willing to endure the risk." 

"And that would mean a lot," Tony said slowly, "if you were actually Thor." 

Everyone turned to stare at him. "Don't get me wrong," Tony said. "You had me, absolutely. The Oscar goes to you, in fact _all_ the Oscars, plus the Golden Globes and whatever that thing is the British give out. But you're not Thor." 

"Stark," Thor said, his face crumpling in sincere confusion— _damn_ it was hard not to believe—"what are you saying? Do you imagine my brother would argue for his own destruction?" 

"No question, it's hard to buy it, and clearly you've got some really interesting issues," Tony said. "But you see, you messed up just one—tiny—bit." 

"Uh, for those of us who missed it?" Steve said. 

"Kin," Natasha said, from the back of the room; her arms were folded over her chest, her face impassive. "He said Loki has no kin." 

"Understandable mistake, really," Tony said, into the falling silence. "I guess you haven't been at ringside for all the times Thor's started biting heads off anytime someone so much as hints that maybe you guys aren't family. But, yeah. You're not Thor. So maybe you should can the bullshit, Loki, and put your brother's soul back where it belongs." 

Something in Loki's face changed. Tony couldn't even have said what it was—the tilt of an eyebrow, the balance of his shoulders, whatever; but all of a sudden, without a word said, it was Loki there again. His mouth worked a little, deciding which way to go, and then he smiled. "Are you sure you want me to do that?" he said, softly, full of menace. He glanced back towards Natasha, and his smile widened. "Are _you_ , Agent Romanoff?" he asked. 

Natasha didn't give anything away as far as Tony could see; her face stayed impassive. Loki got something out of it anyway, apparently, because he laughed: brittle and sharp. He held out his hand and something took shape in the cup of it: a round ball, blue and green, and after a moment Tony realized it was a model of the Earth. 

"Behold your world," Loki said. "Beautiful, isn't it? How fragile it is, to carry so many lives upon it." 

"Loki!" Fury said. "We do _not_ need a demonstration—" 

Loki smiled. He raised a single finger towards the globe and touched it somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. They all stood frozen, while—absolutely nothing happened. The blue globe kept slowly turning under Loki's hand. "Whatever you're doing," Fury began, and then stopped, touching his earpiece, just as the ship _groaned_ around them, the only word for the noise. An alarm on the wall started to flash. 

Fury was frowning at whatever he was being told, which apparently the rest of them weren't cool enough to be included in. "Jarvis," Tony said, "fill us in." 

"There appears to be a category nine hurricane forming around us," Jarvis said. 

"Since when do the categories go up to nine?" Tony said. 

"I _apologize_ for extrapolating from the Saffir-Simpson scale," Jarvis said, pissy. "Observed storms of this windspeed only exist on the gas giants of the solar system. If it goes on long enough, it's possible it might destroy the planet's atmosphere."

"Loki!" Sif snapped, taking a step towards him. "Stop this madness!" 

The globe turned around again and this time Tony saw a small white spot forming where Loki had touched it, a spiral with long arms already growing. He stared at the monster storm getting ready to swallow up the earth, and had one horrible moment of thinking he could _do_ something—that whatever the hell was living in his chest now, whatever had let him be in two places at once, not that he was thinking about that because he _wasn't_ , that maybe it could do something here and holy fuck he was going to have to _try_ , without one iota of control or understanding or reason—

Loki laughed again in all their faces. "Are you beginning to fear, yet?" he said, smiling. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to see me properly leashed?"

He blew on the globe, and it floated away from his hand like a soap bubble and popped. The Helicarrier shuddered once more around them and settled. "The storm is dissipating, sir," Jarvis said. 

"How likely that that was just another one of his illusions?" Tony said. His heart was pounding. There was a strange warm feeling deep in his chest right above the breastbone. 

"Two of our weather satellites are in range, sir; they both picked up the storm independently. If it was an illusion, it was a comprehensive one." Jarvis paused a moment. "We're receiving distress signals from fourteen ships in the storm region. Two of them are sinking."

"You bastard," Steve said, through his teeth, taking a step towards Loki. "Showing off by killing innocent people again—" 

"Oh, I'm sure the good Director Fury can dispatch appropriate rescue," Loki said, dismissive. He looked at Tony and smiled. "And Stark, look at you. Did you bring a little sorcery back with you?" He reached out and tapped Tony's chest with a finger, in the middle of the glowing ring that was shining out from inside his shirt. "Did you think it would allow you to contend with _me?_ " 

Tony shoved Loki's arm away. "You know what I think?" he said, deliberately. "I think you're a coward." Loki stiffened, his eyes going very bright, and Sif and all the Valkyries put hands on their weapons automatically, like they expected a fight to break out. 

"Do you?" Loki said. Tony had to brace himself not to step back: he'd hung out with Thor long enough to know that for Asgardians, pulling out the c-word was not so much waving a red flag in their faces as pouring gasoline on their heads and lighting them on fire. 

"Yeah," he said anyway. "Because maybe you're not afraid of dying or having your soul chopped up, and you're sure as hell not afraid of killing a whole lot of people. But let's face it, you're pissing yourself over what's going to happen when Thor wakes up and figures out that despite your highly convincing rodeo of bullshit and murder, when the chips are down, you'll turn the universe inside out for him."

Tony watched Loki's face while that hit: not laughing anymore, huh? "We don't need to put you on a leash, do we?" Tony said. "Thor's already got it in his hand. And that's what scares you to pieces. But guess what?" 

He reached out and grabbed the sheet and yanked: it slithered off the slab into a white heap on the floor. Thor's body lay uncovered, still and cold and faintly grayish. It wasn't in bad shape considering he'd been dead for more than a week, but still _empty_ in a way that made it seem almost small. 

"Your brother's dead, Loki," Tony said. "So man up and bring him back." 

Loki stood there with his fists clenched at his sides, and Tony could see him trying not to look, fighting it, except he couldn't: his eyes slid sideways first, and then his head turned a little, and then his body followed, and he was standing over Thor's body looking down at him, and then—

"Oh, no, seriously?" Tony said, as Loki bent down and kissed Thor full on the mouth. 

It wasn't a little Disney peck, either: Loki gripped Thor's head by a fistful of hair, leaned on Thor's shoulder and kissed him deep and slow and thorough. It was at least rated R and possibly higher and it _kept going._ Suddenly the golden orb was forming up again in Loki's chest, a small knot visible through his back and silhouetting his ribcage and spine. It seemed to have unwound inside him: long golden tendrils were stretching out in every direction into his arms and legs. The knot started turning over, coiling all of them up again. 

Loki kept kissing Thor, pornographic hungry sucking kisses, and panting for breath quickly in between them. The orb was moving up his throat slowly but surely, pulling in more of itself as it went. Light blazed out for a second at the point between Loki's mouth and Thor's as the soul finally passed into Thor. Then it went rolling down into his chest, long trailers still stretching back to Loki, and started to burst there, unwinding again into long threads, reaching out through his body and chasing out the grey. 

Thor's fingers twitched, his chest heaved. And then, because this whole thing hadn't been scarring enough already, Thor's hand went up and gripped Loki's head and Thor started kissing him _back_ , other hand reaching up to grab Loki's arm and hold him close. Tony winced. He wasn't all that judgemental and people could have their own fun, and he would even grant a kiss was traditional, but he didn't see why bringing someone from the dead had to involve making out with them. Thor and Loki were rounding second base and heading for third at this point. 

The last few tendrils were still pulling out of Loki's body and going into Thor's, being as far as Tony was concerned unnecessarily sluggish about the whole thing; and that was even before Thor reached down and heaved Loki up onto him. So now the two of them were cuddling, on a morgue slab no less, and dear God Tony had been _exaggerating_ about third base but there was some actual hip action going on. 

"Okay, I don't think you're legally allowed to watch any more of this," Tony said to Steve, whose eyes were almost popping in horror. Then Thor and Loki both groaned in a deeply disturbing way and _shuddered_. The last tendril pulled loose from Loki's body with a final spark deep in his chest, and shot up and back into Thor where it belonged. 

Loki rolled off Thor and fell off the slab onto the floor, where he lay flat with his chest heaving and his eyes shut. He'd stopped glowing. Thor lurched up onto his elbows, stiffly, and blinked at all of them. 

He was alive. 

"Holy shit," Tony said after a moment where no one spoke. "We did it." 

They all went silent again, staring at him. Thor stared back. He looked pretty dazed, which, fair enough: died, went to heaven, kidnapped out of heaven, swallowed alive, woke up with his brother's tongue in his mouth—Tony felt the guy had earned more than a little confusion. 

"Thor," Sif said anxiously, "are you—are you—well?

"I am." Thor's voice sounded a little dry and rusty, but wow, it was him. Then a small puzzled frown crossed his face and he looked around him. "But where is Mjolnir?" 

"Oh, you thunder gods and your priorities," Tony said, and suddenly they were all moving in towards him, crowding around and talking, laughing: none of them could help reaching out to touch him, just to be sure it was him, he was really there. 

Fury stayed back but even he had a tiny curve of his mouth pretending it wasn't a smile. "The hammer's back where you dropped it in Dunaszekcso after Doom took you down," he said, when there was a break in the babble. "There's a SHIELD detachment keeping it under guard."

"No problem," Tony said, waving a hand. "We'll pile back on the jet, swing by Hungary, pick it up. Hey, I know a great place for goulash in Budapest. We'll even let _you_ have some," he leaned over under the slab to add magnanimously to—"oh, that son of a bitch." 

Loki was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, sorry for the wait, all, this chapter was a beast to write. All fb loved, here or on [lj](http://astolat.livejournal.com) or [tumblr](http://astolat.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/intimations)! :D


	14. Natasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha kept her cap low and her collar high, despite the heat, until she got to the door of the bar. She felt it again, the low deep-down pull that told her she was close, told her she was where she needed to be.

**TWO YEARS LATER**

The lights of the strip three blocks away threw up a sunset glow behind the ridge of buildings. Natasha kept her cap low and her collar high, despite the heat, until she got to the door of the bar. She felt it again, the low deep-down pull that told her she was close, told her she was where she needed to be. 

It would have been more satisfying if she knew who was making that call. In the last two years the— _sense_ had brought her to two completely unsuspected terrorist cells in Madrid and in Lyons, a long-abandoned Brotherhood of Mutants hideout, an elementary school in Iowa, a campaign rally for a city councilwoman in Detroit, a small temple an hour outside Kyoto, and a completely random—as far as she could tell—point in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Clint had piloted the quinjet there. She'd stood in the doorway looking down at bare ocean, and the itch in the back of her skull had settled quietly, like a satisfied cat going back to sleep. She'd gone back inside and sat down next to him. He'd glanced over. "We good?" 

"As far as I know," she'd said. 

She stood outside the door of the bar for a long time. It didn't feel particularly urgent, and she didn't want to call SHIELD in, even though she knew she should. Fury had people tracking every child in the third-grade classroom she'd visited and watching the councilwoman, who'd won her seat and was being talked about as a Congressional candidate. Someone was stationed at the temple. There hadn't been anything to find at the Brotherhood hideout, Magneto wasn't a slouch at cleanup, but she'd planted some hidden cameras in case they ever came back. 

She had no idea what any of it meant. So far the price tag seemed dangerously low. A spy with a gut feeling that actually worked half the time; a technological wizard become the real thing. Bruce had found a new kind of equilibrium: the Hulk listened to him, more often than not. If Loki really did have terrifying new powers, he wasn't slinging them around anywhere any of them could see, and Thor didn't seem any different at all. Oh, Tony bitched to no end about how none of what he could do made any sense, and how the magic interfered with his engineering, but it wasn't exactly bringing on the end of the world. 

And Steve—Steve was quiet a lot. He spent most of his free time moving on from one church or another, looking for something. Three weeks before she'd followed her gut and found him at morning prayers at the big mosque on the Upper East Side. People had been eyeing him doubtfully on either side; it wasn't like people couldn't recognize Captain America even if he wasn't wearing the costume. He hadn't talked to anyone, he'd just prayed and then stood looking up at the ceiling for a while like he expected an answer. She was starting to wonder if he was getting one. 

Finally she pushed open the door and went inside. It was a low-end bar, smoky, two pool tables grungy enough there weren't any serious hustlers: a few people playing to kill time at one and a handful of college kids giggling around the other. A couple of unenthusiastic strippers were gyrating on a stage the size of a couch, mostly ignored by the crowd. The bar ran the length of the room and was packed full from end to end with serious drinkers mostly not talking, laying bills down on the counter and getting back their glasses. Natasha slipped into a corner and watched the room, waiting for something to sing out. 

Nothing did, and the itch was starting to get worse. She got up and wandered around the games, nothing; the strippers glanced at her and glanced away when she didn't hold out any cash. A seat opened up at the bar and she slid into it. 

The bartender put a cocktail napkin and a shot of Stolichnaya in front of her, leaned in and said softly, "Do you really want to be here, Agent Romanoff?" 

Natasha jerked up and stared: at a black-haired woman with a long nose, sharp cheekbones, voluptuous curves, and green eyes full of murder. "Loki," she said, and oh, she really, really, really should have called SHIELD in on this one. 

He—she—pointed to the glass in front of her. "Drink," he said, "and you can forget you found me. You'll wake to yourself wandering in the city alone."

"And if I don't?" Natasha said, steadily, hand on her thigh sliding onto her gun without letting her shoulder move. It wouldn't hurt him, but it could buy her a moment and clear out the bar. 

Loki smiled at her, a lush red-painted curve. "That depends," he said. "On why you've come." 

Natasha thought of about ten different answers, and then she gave him the truth. "I don't know," she said, watching his eyes. "I get suggestions, these days. I followed them. I didn't know I'd find you here. So—I think you tell me, Loki. Why have I come?" 

The deadly amused look faded slowly out of his face, and the cold perfect beauty of it, too: a mask slipping, and Natasha had to work hard not to show surprise. Underneath he suddenly looked ordinary, tired: like he really was the woman working at the down-market bar, in a dead-end story. "Hey, baby, another shot down here," a man called from the other end. Loki didn't move. "Hey! " 

Loki turned and looked once, down the bar, and the man waving his arm dropped it and sat back, color draining sickly away. "It can wait," he said, and hunched down over his drink.

Natasha watched the exchange, frowning. "What are you _doing_ here?" she said. "Thor's been trying to find you the whole time. There are a thousand SHIELD agents watching for you—"

"They haven't found me, have they?" Loki said. "Isn't that enough answer?" 

"They could have been not-finding you while you lived in a palatial secret lair in the Himalayas," Natasha said. Give Loki two weeks in a hideout, and it was a standing joke at SHIELD he'd turn it into the set of a costume drama: gold and velvet and silk, luxuries whisked in with magic. She'd found him once that way, triangulating reports of vanished caviar and diamonds to a central point, though he'd learned to scatter his thefts after that. He could do without, but he didn't like to. "You don't need money." 

"I do, to live among mortals," Loki said. 

"Why would you want to?" she said. 

He didn't answer. He stood there with his hand braced on the counter, and then he said, "Come, then," low, and came out from behind the bar. 

The customers turned in confusion, some of them calling out; he ignored them. Their voices died away: he was changing even as he walked towards the door, illusion running off him like water as he unfolded to his full height, and people started scrambling away in terror into the corners of the room as they recognized his face, a few fleeing out ahead of them into the street. 

Natasha fell into step with him in the street and tossed her cap into a trash can: she didn't think it was a good idea for SHIELD to send in a full response team. If Fury saw her in the surveillance, he'd hold off. She glanced at a traffic cam and flashed a couple of hand signs to make sure: _situation under control_. She hoped she wasn't lying. 

Loki was striding down the center of the street and heading towards the strip. People were abandoning their cars on both sides of the yellow line and running away; the cars further back were honking wildly, drunken yells following. It was turning into a giant chaotic mess of noise and confusion, people screaming and running, yelling, "Loki! Loki's here!" 

Natasha watched it happening: SHIELD would get traffic control in place soon enough, but the city would be full of crazy reports and drunken panic for hours. If he wanted to disappear, there would be plenty of chaos to cover his tracks. Of course, he could just have been doing it for fun, cutting loose after two years of hiding. 

She still hadn't decided which it was seven blocks away on the other side of the strip, when he stopped at a small apartment building and pushed the doors open, the locks sparking as he went. There was an elevator the size of a postage stamp: Natasha was just as glad when he took the stairs instead, though she had to stretch to keep up with him all six flights up.

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't what she got on the other side of the apartment door: an apartment. It had wall to wall carpeting, tracked a little with dirt, a basic squashy red couch that looked like it had seen two years of heavy and careless use, a wall full of books, and a casual mess everywhere, pair of high-heeled shoes in one corner, a small backpack in the other, a dirty mug sitting on the coffee table. It was a place someone lived in; someone who wasn't an Asgardian sorcerer. It made no sense at all. 

She followed Loki into the kitchen and stopped. A little girl looked up from the table, from a notebook full of blocky printed letters. She might have been about five years old, with green eyes in a thin, pale face. "Hi, daddy," she said. She looked at Natasha and back to Loki. "Are we going to New York now?" 

"Yes," Loki said. His voice trembled, and Natasha managed to drag her eyes away to him: he was looking at the girl like she was—like she was Thor, dead on a battlefield and gone. 

"I'll get Fenris," the little girl said, and hopped down from her chair and walked out of the room. There was something wrong about the way she moved, something subtle—her balance off, limbs swinging too gangly. 

Loki just stood in the same place after she'd left, staring at nothing. Natasha had no idea what to say. "What's her name?" she said finally. 

"Hela," Loki said. 

She came back in a moment, carrying a ragged stuffed black wolf in one arm. "I'm ready," she said. "Can we see the Statue of Liberty? And the Empire State Building?"

"Yes," Loki said, and he bent down to pick her up. She snuggled against him and looked curiously at Natasha. There was more wrong with her face: grey shadows under her eyes, a greenish tinge in her hollow cheeks. There was a faint chemical smell coming off her, like ozone. 

Natasha managed to stop staring back. Loki was looking at her, his face hard. "Well?" he said, and looked at the pocket of her jacket, where her earpiece was. 

Natasha took it out slowly. "This is Agent Romanoff," she said. "I need a pickup." 

Hela lifted her head off Loki's shoulder. "Can we go in a limousine?" 

"Yes," Loki said. 

"Make it a limo," Natasha said. 

Hela fell asleep in the private jet after half an hour's flight, her head pillowed in Loki's lap. He was stroking her hair gently, looking down at her, his face still naked. Natasha was sitting across from him. The cabin was dark; it was just the three of them, and a pilot up front who'd turn them nose-first into the ground if she gave the word. 

"She's yours and—Thor's," Natasha said. Loki didn't correct her, so she decided to go on with that assumption. "What's wrong with her?" 

"With her?" Loki said. "Nothing." He kept stroking her hair. "The body is dying."

The girl's legs curled on the chair were thin, almost skeletal. In the dark cabin, there was a faint glow coming from inside her. "It's not her body?" Natasha said. 

"She wasn't conceived through the flesh, so she has none." Loki said. "I took one of the empty bodies you keep around in your hospitals, on machines." 

"And it's not strong enough to hold her," Natasha said. Loki's face twisted briefly, a spasm of pain. "Can you replace it?" 

"A few times," he said after a moment. "As she grows stronger, she will—burn through them more quickly."

"How long?"

"Five years, perhaps," Loki said. "Before her spirit begins to rip through mortal flesh like tissue paper." 

"And there's nothing else," she said. "Nothing else you can do."

He laughed, a high sharp sound that cut off abruptly when Hela stirred a little on his lap. His hand stilled, and he kept silent until she settled again. "Do you think I've been living in a rathole hiding her from Thor for my pleasure?"

"What have you tried?" Natasha said warily. 

"A thousand things," he said. "I wasn't willing to endure my dear brother's opposition or yours, if any of the uglier ones showed any chance of working." 

Natasha decided she didn't need to know details about anything sufficiently ugly that Thor would have objected to it with his daughter's life on the line. If Loki had still been planning on trying any of them, she was pretty sure their meeting in the bar would have gone very differently. "You still didn't need to live in a rathole."

"She wanted to see life," Loki said. 

"And you picked Vegas?" Natasha said. 

"Should I have taken her to Disneyland?" Loki hissed. "Do you think her some puling mortal creature that needs to be sheltered from nine-tenths of existence to avoid tormenting its unformed mind? She is a child of Asgard, conceived of pure spirit, heir to powers beyond your pathetic imagination. Whores and drunkards and liars hold as least as much value and interest for her as the children of your race."

He subsided as quickly as he'd flared up, like a match going out. His head bowed. After a moment, he said more dully, "The city is full of transients and visitors; your paper money is easy to obtain. I placed her in schools, from time to time, and took her from them when she grew bored. No one noticed or complained. It required little effort to remain concealed." 

And he'd needed everything he had for a bigger job. Natasha looked at the dying child on his lap, the price he'd paid. "Are you sorry?" she said. She didn't think he needed her to say what for. 

"She would never have existed," he said, "so no." His mouth quirked in a hard, mirthless smile. "But I will never do it again. Which I imagine is the general idea." 

He fell asleep himself somewhere over the midwest, right under her eyes, which said more than anything about how badly off he was. Maybe half an hour later, Hela stirred and sat up, rubbed her eyes and then swung her legs down and faced Natasha, kicking them idly over the edge of the seat as she bounced the stuffed wolf on her lap. The glow beneath her skin made her look vaguely like a character in a video game, unreal. "Tell me about it," she said. 

"New York?" Natasha said. 

"No," Hela said. "About the realm of the dead. Daddy breaks things when I ask him, and I want to know. I'm going there soon."

Her green eyes were fever-bright, unafraid. A shiver crawled up Natasha's spine. That hadn't happened in a long while. "It's—it's large," Natasha said, keeping her voice steady. "I met some people I had known. They—"

"Never mind," Hela interrupted. "You don't really remember." 

Natasha remembered every second of it, with sharp-edged clarity. She had tried to forget. "I'm sorry?" she said. 

"That's not what it's really like," Hela said. She sighed and kicked her feet again. "That's okay. Tell me about mommy." 

"What?" Natasha said. 

"Mommy," Hela said. "He's in New York." 

Natasha looked at Loki, still asleep and slumped against the side of his seat. Had he—yes, of course he'd taught her to call Thor mommy. "Thor is—" She paused, trying to figure out how to explain Thor in words. "You'll meet him yourself, soon," she said finally. The surveillance cameras were sending everything back to SHIELD. Thor would meet them at the airport, if he didn't show up mid-air and smash his way into the plane, which if Natasha knew him was what he _wanted_ to do, even if he'd hold off for the child's sake. 

She had no idea what was going to happen then, what this would mean. She looked at the strange, disjointed little girl, with her soul getting ready to burn its way out of her used-up body, and she did know one thing. "He's going to love you," she said quietly. 

"I know," Hela said, matter-of-fact. "That's what will make it hurt."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All fb loved, here or on [lj](http://astolat.livejournal.com) or [tumblr](http://astolat.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/intimations)!


	15. Thor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor remembered Valhalla only distantly, a warm welcome ready to receive him again whenever he should come: it was nothing which sapped his will, nor made him eager for death. But this, he feared, might bring him to the end of his courage.

Thor could scarcely see for wrath, for Loki's treachery, worse than any other imaginable: five years only left, and he had kept her hidden, secret, for two. Thor had flown with the jet the last hundred miles, above it, and now upon the tarmac waited before the stairs with his breath heaving in angry gouts in his chest. His daughter, his child, and in such straits: he would rend Loki limb from limb for concealing this. 

Then the door opened, and Loki came forth carrying her in his arms; she clung to him a small and dreadful thing, blazing like a beacon from the corpselike shell about her. Loki bore her slowly down the stairs and faced Thor at their foot. 

Anger fled; Thor crossed three paces and had both of them in his arms, and Loki turned his face in his agony against Thor's shoulder. 

Little needed to be said. Thor gently took her from Loki, into one arm, and kissed Loki's brow. She nestled her head against him, and Loki let Thor put his arm about his hunched shoulders as they walked together from the field. 

She and Loki both slept in the chariot that waited, sent by Stark, to bear them home. Thor looked across the distance at Natasha; she had withdrawn into a corner and made herself small, difficult to notice, giving them privacy. "I thank you with all my heart for finding them," Thor said, softly that he would not wake them. "I am in your debt, Natasha." 

She nodded a little, in acknowledgement. "Are you going to be all right?" she asked. 

"I know not," Thor said, honestly. His heart felt strangely fragile in his breast, opened cruelly wide to take in, swiftly, the child sleeping in his lap. Time itself felt changed utterly. He was now aware suddenly of every moment, bright and terrible, separate from every other and sliding inexorably from his grasp, flying on swiftly to an intolerable and certain end. Was this how his mortal friends lived each day? He could not bear to ask, to know that they were forced to endure such pain.

Thor remembered Valhalla only distantly, a warm welcome ready to receive him again whenever he should come: it was nothing which sapped his will, nor made him eager for death. But this, he feared, might bring him to the end of his courage. Already he could see what it had done to Loki, to live so, and for only a little time. The head upon his shoulder was heavy, and Loki's hands so thin each knuckle-joint seemed swollen. 

There were chambers aplenty at Stark's abode, and his friends had not failed to show him all the kindness in their power: when he carried Hela above, there was already a chamber readied for her which looked out upon two grand vistas of the city, a small bed laden with soft toys and a sleeping-gown made ready, a great chair beside it, a washroom adjacent. "I have to brush my teeth," Hela said, lifting her head and rousing as he bore her within, and she insisted on being set down to perform her ablutions. 

Thor watched her at the basin with a sensation as of a knife sawing slowly and gently at a tendon: how valiantly she struggled to make the puppet-limbs of her body function with any measure of grace. Loki stood by the window gazing out at the city. Hela went to him when she had finished, expectantly, and obedient he bent down and inspected her work, then helped her change her garments for the sleeping-gown. 

"Look, the Empire State Building is right there," she said with satisfaction, gazing out at the tower. 

"Yes," Loki said, drawing the covers over her. 

"Don't sleep in the chair," she said. 

"I will sleep wherever I please," Loki said. 

She lifted her head and looked at Thor. "Mommy, don't let him sleep in the chair." 

"I will not, little one," Thor said. "We will sleep in the bedchamber beside: you shall have but to call to rouse us." 

She closed her eyes and slept at once. Thor lingered a while over her bed, each awkward breath she took equal parts pleasure and pain, and then he took Loki out of the chair despite his hissed protests, for he had given her his word. Loki wrestled mightily, though in small movements: they were both constrained by the need to keep their struggle silent. 

"Come, brother," Thor said in a soft whisper, even while dragging him step by step from the room. "You only wound her by letting her see your sorrow too plain." 

Loki stiffened, and then he ceased his resistance. 

The room beside was more plainly furnished, but there was a bed. Loki sat upon it heavily, and Thor had at last a moment to look upon him. He had long imagined this meeting, this conversation: two years had offered him ample time to consider what he would say, what words he might find, to at last offer Loki an escape from the madness of his misery and feigned hatred. 

Steve Rogers had told him of the strange things Loki's Jotun sire had said, in the land of the dead: a false twisting of the tale of Ymir, it had seemed to Thor, and yet—it was true that all lore said the dead could not tell lies. There were questions aplenty now which he wished to lay before their father; he had only lingered to find Loki, and bring him back to Asgard as well to join him in that act. It was in Thor's heart that he should offer to stand aside in Loki's favor, if Odin had no answer to the charges. 

And now—what did any of it matter? Loki's heir was his as well, and she would soon be lost to them both. Thor sat beside his brother, and they did not speak.

He woke with the dawn. Loki yet slept encircled unprotesting in his arms, and did not stir when Thor gently eased him to the pillows and rose. He dressed and crept within the next bedchamber: Hela slept on as well, the black hair of the mortal shell spread like a shadow upon her pillow, the light of her spirit gleaming faintly through the pallid skin, a glow more bright than the beginning of the day. 

He remained watching her while the sun climbed slow over the towers of the city, every beam striking like a death-knell. The hour of seven came, and then eight; beneath them the streets and towers began to fill and ebb with the great human tides of the city. Hela murmured a little but did not wake as he resettled the coverlet upon her, and then he drew a deep breath and went to his own chambers on the floor below, there to speak with Jane. 

He went not slowly, for a bitter task was not made kinder by delay, then stopped in the doorway when it had opened for him. His heart smote him fresh as she looked up, brushing her hair from her eyes: she was kneeling over a traveling-case, laying her garments within. She already knew, then, without a word said: he ought have trusted it would be so. 

"My dearest Jane," Thor said, going to her, and taking the hand she gave him; he brought it formally to his lips as he knelt beside her. He would not have taken her mouth, having already forfeited that right in his heart; but she leaned forward and kissed him sweetly. He dared, therefore, and stroked her hair gently with his fingers. "Where shall you go?"

"Tony's been after me to run a lab he wants to set up in New Mexico to work on a—miniature Bifrost, you might call it." Jane waved a hand, half-dismissive, but he could see the excitement that suffused her despite her deprecation. "It'll only go from Earth to Mars. Well," she added, "once we've built it, which will probably be twenty years, if we're lucky." She smiled at him, rueful. 

"I have no doubt it will be sooner than that, if you have charge of it," he said. "That is a noble work indeed. Have you deferred it before now for my sake?" 

"Well," she said, her cheeks going pink, "I was—maybe—sort of—planning to ask you to come out there with me? When you weren't actually saving the world." 

He kissed her hand again. "And I would have come," he said. "Jane, I would you knew: if matters were other than they are—it would have been my honor and my joy to make you known to my daughter. And—and—someday, perhaps, to my mother and my father as well." 

"Oh," she said, ducking her head with her quick pleased half-smile, which came and went like a darting kingsilver flash. "Well. That's—thank you. And for your information," she added, lifting her chin again, "you're not completely off the hook, here. Thor, you're going to find a way to save her. I know it." 

Thor swallowed; it was a hope he had not yet dared to give shape even in the silence of his own mind. But now it swelled within him: surely there might yet be some means to try. Loki had failed, but he had labored alone. Thor would ask the aid of all his friends. He would send word to Asgard for his father's help; he would ask Fury to call upon the wide circles of all the world's powers. Natasha's quickened vision would guide their labors towards success; Stark would perhaps build Hela a great splendid shell of gold and steel the like of his armor, fit for a princess of Asgard; Banner might through his arts alter another mortal body as he had his own, to make it strong enough to bear her spirit. Surely together they could not fail to find for his child a safe harbor in the world. 

"May it be so," he said. 

"It will," she said. "And then—"

"I would not ask you to wait upon such a chance," Thor said. Even if they succeeded, it would be no easy matter; long years might pass in the effort, and her mortal life hanging uncertain in the balance all the while. 

"And I wouldn't say yes if you did," she said, serenely. "So it's good you're not asking."

He smiled a little, but he feared she was untruthful: that she would wait for him. "Forgive me, Jane." 

"My mom died when I was eleven," Jane said. "My dad—he was working with Eric Selvig at Stanford then, they were getting close to a huge breakthrough on string theory—and my dad quit his job and got another teaching high school physics at a private boarding school that let me in, so he could have more time for me." She lay her hand upon his cheek. "There's nothing to forgive."

So he was able to leave her without the weight of having wounded her too deep, which he had dreaded; he felt already burdened with sorrow he did not know how to endure. But he could still less easily divide his heart, at present: Jane and her own mortality deserved full measures of love and time, and he could give neither. Hela's terrible need now demanded his every moment, his every thought. 

He returned to the bedchamber, and found it empty: Hela had gone, and with her some few of the toys, though there was no sign of her in the hall. Thor tried not to feel alarm; she would not have gone far, surely, nor left the safety of the tower—he would not wish his daughter to be a fearful creature, hiding meek in her chamber. He would merely find her for the pleasure of her company. "Hail, Jarvis," Thor called. "Do you hear my call?" 

"I do, Thor," Jarvis said, speaking from the wall. "How may I help you?" 

"Is my daughter in your sight?" Thor asked. 

"Hela is—" Jarvis paused. "Oh dear. She is on the main terrace, sir. With the Hulk." 

Thor flung out his hand: Mjolnir burst through the intervening wall and struck into his palm. Through the gaping hole Thor glimpsed for a moment Loki sitting bolt upright in the bed, but he did not stay: Loki would follow by his own arts. He hurled himself through the window, shaking off the fragments of glass, and wrenched Mjolnir around midair to throw himself at the great terrace above the symbol of the Avengers' name. 

He landed heavily upon the stones, and paused: Hela and the Hulk looked up at him, from opposite sides of a peculiar gathering of cups and platters of very small size, with several soft toys of animal form arrayed as well about them. "Mommy," Hela said in tones of reproof, "You knocked over the teapot." She righted one larger pot. 

"You are well?" Thor said in some anxiety, regarding the Hulk, who gazed back with sullen mien. 

"Of course," Hela said. "Come and have tea with us." 

"What?" Thor said, and Loki erupted from within the building naked as though he had risen straight from bed, his hands wreathed in clouds of white magic that glittered with ice and a great shivering coldness intense enough to cross the intervening air to be felt even upon Thor's skin; his arms were blue to the elbow and the jotun markings rose to his bare shoulders. 

The Hulk sat up abruptly, and Thor renewed his grip upon Mjolnir: he would snatch Hela and take her off, into the air—

"Story!" Hulk said. 

Loki stared wildly at them and then at Thor, who gazed in equal perplexity back: while they stood irresolute, Hela frowned and leaning towards the Hulk said in a low persuasive voice, "We're playing tea-party. You can have a story later." 

The Hulk scratched his head. "Story later," he repeated slowly, as if obedient, but even as he did his brows beetled slowly into a cloud of anger and he shook his head fiercely. "Story _always_ later! Hulk wait and wait! Story now!" 

Hela sat back with an expression of indignation. "No!" she said. "We're playing tea-party!"

"Story!" Hulk bellowed, and slammed down a fist upon the terrace, which cracked beneath the blow. 

Hela sprang to her feet and roared in a voice like seven trolls of Grondheim in chorus, louder than he, "Tea-party!" and began to coruscate in waves of golden light visible even through her flesh. 

"No!" Loki cried, the ice vanishing from his hands, and leapt towards her: Thor realized in horror the edges of the mortal body were glowing as though in a roasting fire, fingertips beginning to go an orange-red. "Hela, you must not!" 

He seized her in his arms, while Thor stood hovering over, nearly ill with helplessness: but thankfully the light began to dim, and then she nestled against Loki's shoulder and said, "We'll play tea-party, right?" 

"Yes," Loki said; he was clutched on to her, panting, and Thor gazed down at them and frowned: the color had faded swiftly from Hela's hands. 

"Hela!" he said. Loki and Hela both looked up towards him, Loki yet dazed with panic, and Hela's eyes limpid with innocence. To her misfortune, it was an expression Thor knew well: one which in Loki's hands had saved them from many a well-deserved scolding as boys, though she was not yet as skilled as Loki had since become. "That was unkind," Thor said. "You are not to play at such things: it is unworthy of you. And you ought be more gracious to—" he looked at the Hulk, who had backed away with a wary look, and now peered with suspicious gaze over at them all from safe distance, "—your playmates," Thor finished weakly. 

Hela abandoned her attempt at subterfuge and turned a dispassionate look upon the Hulk, while Loki stared at her with an expression of astonished outrage, to which Thor felt _he_ had scarcely a right. "He's older than I am," Hela said. "I don't see why I have to treat him like a baby just because he's too lazy to talk properly."

"Hulk not lazy!" Hulk said. 

"Hulk _is_ not lazy," Hela said. 

"OK," Hulk said. 

"No, you have to _say_ it," Hela said firmly. 

"Talk boring!" Hulk said. "Talk talk talk, Hulk sleep. Boring! Hulk want story!" 

Hela crossed her arms. "I don't think he should be encouraged," she said. "Mrs. Kandinsky says discipline and boundaries are very important for young children." 

"Who is this Lady Kandinsky?" Thor said to Loki. 

"Her last preschool teacher," Loki said. 

"Although, it wasn't very interesting there," Hela said regretfully. "She always stopped the really good fights right away." 

Thor shook his head in some dismay: he did not mean to cause Loki pain by reproving him on the matter, but he did not think he had properly undertaken the education of their daughter. "Have your other schools permitted you to fight more?" he asked. 

Hela shrugged. "The bars were better for that, really," she said. "Once there was a mutant, that was fun."

Thor nodded; he had faced on some occasions the more powerful among Earth's mutated warriors, and they were often worthy adversaries, well able to test his skill. He caught Loki's glare and returned it. "Only once?" he demanded. 

"I suppose it's too much to ask," Loki said coldly, "that you should recognize that _her body is mortal_." 

"That is no excuse for coddling her," Thor said. "That is cause for choosing her adversaries wisely, to suit her ability, and honing her defensive skills." 

"There are other things worth pursuing besides mindless combat, you oaf," Loki hissed. 

"Daddy," Hela said softly. Loki glanced at her and silenced; then she looked up at Thor and said simply, "He means, I won't need that in Hel." 

Loki flinched away as though he had been struck; Thor wished to do as much, to turn from her looking out at him through the calm small face, and think not of her death. With a great effort he forced himself to stand before it, and said to her gently, "If your life must be brief, still you should taste all you can that is yours by right: you are descended of two great lines of kings and warriors, and the glory of battle and the honor therein are not unworthy of your time. 

"Nor," he added firmly, "is the virtue of hospitality to your drinking-companions. Come: we shall sit about your tea-party together, and as we feast, your father shall recount to us all the tale of how he and I and our friends once hunted the Winged Stag of Valdfulk and found the ancient citadel of Kraan."

"Story!" Hulk said, and crept back and took his place again. 

"Oh, all right," Hela said, seating herself as well, and putting the stuffed wolf-toy into her lap. "I haven't heard that one." 

"No, you _haven't_ ," Loki said pointedly, glaring at Thor, who looked back in confusion, before he remembered—ah. Perhaps it was not the best tale for Hela's ears. He looked at Hela and the Hulk waiting with expectant air, and looked back at Loki, who said, " _Fine_ ," in the way that meant he would contrive some clever lie or another, and win them out of the difficulty. With relief Thor seated himself by Hela's side. 

"Not to interrupt family bonding time—" Tony Stark said, from the door of the terrace: though no danger loomed as far as Thor could see, he wore his armor, shining gold and red, though the visor was raised. 

"You do not intrude, Stark. Come and join us," Thor said, beckoning. "I would make you known to my daughter." 

Stark looked at Hela, who gazed back at him and blinked. "Yes, love to," Stark said. "That's going to be great. She's clearly a chip off the old block already. But if I might make a small suggestion—" 

"Yes?" Thor said. 

"The terrace is a little bit exposed, out here," Stark said. "I've been informed in somewhat urgent terms that it would be a good idea for Loki to put on some pants." 

Loki rolled his eyes. "Midgardians," he said, and was in an instant clothed again as he seated himself at the feast. 

"Fantastic," Stark said, backing away through the door. "I'll leave you all to it—" 

"No, no," Loki said. "I join my voice to my brother's, Stark. Do come and sit with us, and meet Hela. After all, one might consider you her godfather. You were so _very_ encouraging in the matter of completing her conception." 

Thor was surprised at Loki's sudden warmth, but delighted nonetheless; with pleasure he turned to Stark, who with an awkward slow step—Thor had noted the armor _was_ less maneuverable upon the ground than in the air—came towards their gathering and with a few creaks lowered himself to the ground between Hela and the Hulk, and gave her a smile with many teeth. "Great to meet you, kid," he said. 

"I'll pour the tea," Hela said, and took up the squat little pot to dispense drink to her guests; Thor could not but envision her a long time hence, standing proud in her own hall and sending round a horn of mead to her sworn warriors: it might yet come to pass. He looked at Loki, to share the thought, and felt coldness touch his skin: Loki gazed upon her with naked despair, and his brother was not a fool. 

Loki met his eyes, over the cups, and from behind a wintry smile said to his heart, _Try, by all means. But this is all that we will ever have._

The pot had gone around twice, with its imaginary brew, and Loki was in the midst of recounting the great pursuit. He had already neatly omitted their mortifying encounter with the elves, the details of which Thor was in no great hurry to have anyone learn, much less his daughter, and explained away their acquisition of the silken chains which they had later used in the hunting as the gift of a friendly dryad of the wood in exchange for their favors. 

The latter was a true enough story for the most part, merely borrowed from another occasion: in fact they had traded her their favors for Fandral's freedom, as he had by accident injured one of her twigs with an arrow and thus allowed her to enslave him. Stark had been somewhat taken aback by Loki's description of the dryad's entertainment, glancing at Hela on several occasions, and the Hulk had briefly grown suspicious of some alteration in the tale. But in the end he had been distracted by Loki's hurrying onward to describe at tiresome length their passage through the forest and the number of birds which they had seen. 

Now the door to the terrace flung open once again, and Thor looked up to see Natasha bursting out towards them, a strange distant look to her eyes, which Thor had learned now oft heralded some vision. "You shouldn't be out here," she said, breathing hard. "None of us should be out here." 

"Take Hela," Thor said to Loki, as Mjolnir leapt into his hand. Loki snatched her into his arms; the Hulk stood up as well, brightening. "Hulk smash?" 

"I don't know," Natasha said, sweeping the city with her gaze, and then she fixed it upon the outcropping of steel, where ordinarily Stark landed. Thor looking saw in the air above the landing platform a strange twisting disturbance, as though the air writhed upon itself, distorting. 

As he gazed on it, he felt a sensation wholly unfamiliar: so strange he scarce could put a name to it, until tearing his eyes away to glance at Loki, at Stark's white and horrified face, he understood it as fear. 

"Hulk not want," Hulk said uneasily, backing away from it. 

"Stop looking at it!" Loki snapped. He had Hela drawn tight against him, but now he turned and thrust her at the door. "Go inside. Stark— _Stark_." He seized Stark by the shoulder and turned him from the distortion. "Stay with Hela and take her to safety if it gets past us." 

Stark's face looked grey and strained, even from the brief instant which had passed; he stared at Loki in blankness a moment, then shook himself and staggered within. Natasha had already withdrawn. Thor turned and readied himself, Loki upon his flank an instantly familiar presence, though too many long years had passed since last they had fought together so: he would have rejoiced, in any other circumstance. 

The distortion swelled out abruptly, and then compressed itself once more down into a small dark space, a narrow way opened where none should have existed: and through the gap a long spindly stick-leg came feeling a way, and after it the round antennaed head of a great antlike creature, investigating, though Thor could tell this was not its true shape. He recognized it from some tale of his schooldays: surely it was one of the scavengers who haunted the base of Yggdrasil. 

"What does it here?" Thor asked around the clench of horror in his throat, without looking away: the creature had squeezed out the hole and was picking its way cautiously down the stairs towards their position. 

Loki watched it come, his face hard and cold and taut. "Scouting, perhaps," he said, and Thor shifted his grip upon Mjolnir: he wished dearly to destroy the thing. But Loki put out a hand to stay him. "Let it come," he said. "We need to see what it's looking for." 

The scavenger picked its way onto the terrace and past them: Thor could look upon it without horror, as he could not the small gap that yet hung open above the landing-pad: Loki had it aright, the scavenger itself was not the source of dread. Something worse yet lay on the other side of that unnatural window. Something too great to pass through, at present. 

The ant prodded at the ruins of the tea-party, gathering up in its forelegs the tea-pot and raising it for examination by its antennae. Hulk made an abortive gesture towards it, an angry grunt, but the scavenger paid him no mind. It let the tea-pot drop and reached out for the toys lying scattered about, and abruptly the door pushed open and Hela flung herself out upon the terrace again away from Natasha's reaching hands, crying, "Fenris!" 

"Hela, get back!" Thor said; but the ant's head had come up already, antennae swiveling towards her, quivering as they stretched out. 

Loki had intercepted her flight, and held her back now from the ant. "You can't possibly imagine we'll let you have her," Loki said to the scavenger, which raised its head towards him and waved its antennae. A faint sweetness crossed the air, a message so strange and difficult Thor could not truly understand it: the Allspeech was rooted in life, in the truth of the universe, in its order, and the scavengers were creatures of its border, partaking half in that which lay beyond. 

It was a warning, that was all the sense Thor could gain of it, but Loki had studied the mysteries long beyond him, and had living gone into the boughs of Yggdrasil and the realm of the dead: there was a terrible look upon his face, an understanding dawning slow which Thor could scarcely endure to see. " _No,_ " Loki said, and Thor saw Hela draw silently with her face abandoned to expressionlessness against his side. 

The scavenger twitched its antennae again and turned away without further effort to speak: it crawled from them back up the stairs and began to thrust itself with an effort back through the open window. "Loki!" Thor said sharply, for Loki had gathered Hela into his arms and stood with her held close, his eyes looking blindly out at the air. 

"It isn't our enemy," Loki said. The ant was halfway through and wriggling the rest of the way. "Let it go." 

He was calm, but it was the calmness of resignation, beyond hope. Thor steadied himself and said, "What lies there? Beyond that—" He gestured at the hole. The ant had gone; it merely hung now waiting, a small impossible darkness. 

Loki raised one hand towards it and spoke: a low song of the morning and of spring renewal, and the ragged edges of the sky about the hole trembled and unraveled themselves a little, stretching filaments across the gap to one another. They wove themselves together slowly and laboriously while he chanted, the horror diminishing as the window closed, until at last the world was whole again, and he let his hand fall into silence. 

"Nithhogg," he said. "Nithhogg is coming for her. Come." He bent and picked up the ragged little toy, gave it into Hela's arms without ever setting her down, and turned inside. 

Thor scarcely knew what he did. He followed, or must have. Dr. Banner stumbled in after him, pressing a hand to his head, and said something to him, a question: Thor did not answer. In automatic gesture he drew off his cloak and gave it to Banner, to cover himself against the cold wind that blew in from the opened door behind them. 

Stark was within, holding a bottle already open of strong liquor, and looking at his face said nothing but offered it. Thor took it from him full willing and tipped back his head and let it run down his throat, a hot stream; he would take even what small courage there was to be had from such measures. He drank, and set down the bottle empty, and wiped his mouth: with an effort he was his own master again and could say, "What is there to be done?" 

Loki did not answer. He had seated himself upon the couch and was holding Hela close, silently. "Daddy," Hela said after a moment.

"I know," he said. "Stark. Send word to make ready your jet. We must go at once." 

"Where?" Thor asked, dreading the answer he feared he already knew. 

"Back to Naples," Loki said. "To the door we used." He did not need to say what they would do there. 

His friends did not try to speak to him, to either of them, while the preparations were swiftly made. Thor was grateful. Loki gave Hela after a little while into his arms, and let Thor hold her while they rode in Stark's flying chariot to the airport, and climbed into the jet. He carried her to a seat and settled her there in his lap. He was aware dimly of his friends gathered not far from him, their voices low; all of them: Steve Rogers and Clint Barton had met them. Loki was a silence at his side, gazing out the window with a hand to his lips as they lifted into the air. He was watching Hela's reflection in the glass, as though he could not bear to look on her directly. 

Some time passed; not very much. Natasha came to his side and said quietly, "Thor, I'm sorry to have to ask you, but we're flying blind. Can you tell us what's going on?" 

"The end of all things," Loki said, without looking around, and she stared at him startled. 

Natasha could not easily understand, of course: they knew so little. They had not even any name for Nithhogg in their own tongue; they did not even know of its existence, their race too young and sheltered from such dread knowledge. Thor tried to gather himself to speak, to explain, and was grateful beyond measure when Loki shut his eyes and put his fingers on his arm, letting him give over the attempt, and spoke in his stead. 

"Nithhogg is the devourer that gnaws the roots of Yggdrasil," Loki said, "seeking to bring down the tree. But the dead gather about the roots and shield and nourish them, so they grow more swiftly than Nithhogg can feed. That is why the realm of the dead barricades itself so, and resists all intrusion; it must be so, that Nithhogg cannot touch them. But Hela was conceived in that realm and is yet outside it—the line of her spirit is still anchored there, not in flesh. If Nithhogg—" 

His voice faltered, and he drew three quick harsh breaths before he drove on. "If Nithhogg devours her, it can follow that line and pierce the defenses. It can feast upon the dead from within, and when it has devoured them all and laid waste their realm, it will turn unchecked upon the tree. It will eat away until Yggdrasil comes down, eat the corpse of the tree as well, and any new sapling that might take root. The end of all things," he said, again, with his thin bitter smile. 

"So this is—what, Ragnarok?" Bruce said; the others had gathered near around to hear Loki's recounting, their faces pale with horror. 

"No, it's not Ragnarok!" Loki snarled, rousing unfairly to impatience. "Ragnarok is not an end, only a place of turning. This is the end of Ragnarok. The breaking of the unbroken cycle." 

"Okay," Tony Stark said after a moment. "That's fairly bad. What exactly are we doing about it?" 

It was Loki's turn to fall silent, then; he turned away from them, and the tears spilled from his eyes. Thor held Hela a little tighter. The small mortal body was cold in his arms. It was she, braver than them both, who raised her head and answered for them: "I have to go," she said. 

"Uh," Bruce said, "—where?"

"To the dead," Hela said. "Once I'm home, Nithhogg can't get to me." 

"It is not your home!" Thor said. She did not argue with him, only lay her head back down against his chest. 

"Wait a second," Steve Rogers said. "You're not—" He was staring at Thor with a half smile upon his face, not of mirth but of disbelief. "You want—to _kill her?_ " 

Loki erupted to his feet and spat at him, "Would you have us let her be devoured by the worm instead?" 

Rogers stared at him. "There's got to be—" 

"Some other way?" Loki said. "We should _fight_ it, perhaps, the devourer of all creation? Or did you mean to talk to it, try to persuade it that really, it doesn't _want_ to eat the universe that badly? By all means, tell me _what you would have us do!_ "

His voice was rising, high and mocking and shrill, and Thor reached out and caught his arm, drew Loki back into his seat. Loki yielded without protest; he was trembling beneath Thor's grip. 

"Could we—run?" Natasha said. "It took it two years to get here. If we went to Asgard—?" 

Loki laughed. "If running would save her, if there were any way to conceal her, I'd be three galaxies away letting Nithhogg devour your planet by now," he said. "But her connection to the realm of the dead leads through the door I used to bring Thor's spirit out. She can't get back save through that portal: wherever in the universe she lost her binding to flesh, her spirit would have to return. And by then—" 

"It'll be waiting," Stark finished. 

"Yes," Loki said, dully. "That's why the scavengers warned us. They often feed on Nithhogg's leavings, but there will be none, if it succeeds in its final aim. It has already drawn close enough that they could gnaw through the thinning of the universe by its side, and send a messenger."

They fell silent then, all together. 

In a little while, Stark rose and brought a bottle: one without markings and of clear glass, from which the liquor shone with a pale gleam like the light of stars. "I've been meaning to spring this one on you guys on a special occasion," he said. "Not exactly this one, but, uh." He trailed away and reached for the cap.

Loki had slowly turned, and now raised his gaze incredulous from the bottle up to Stark's face. "You used seith to _brew spirits_."

"Come on," Stark said. "Like nobody does that in Asgard." Then he paused, uncertainly. 

"If anyone so abused the mysteries, the Allfather would have them stripped of all rank and power and flung into the void," Thor said, staring at him also. 

"Oh," Stark said awkwardly, hand frozen on the open bottle. "Well—"

"Give it here," Loki said, and drank three swallows from the neck. He shook himself after, waist to shoulders, and handed it on to Thor. 

The liquor was nothing like mortal drink, nor yet like the mead of Asgard, nor the taste, half-remembered, of the ash-honey brew of Valhalla: it glittered upon the tongue, bright and changeable, with no flavor that he could name. It filled his limbs with a strange tingle, and lifted almost against his will some of the despair that bowed him low: he drew a breath, when he lowered the bottle from his lips, and felt as though his chest had broken free of iron bands constraining his lungs.

"Can I have some?" Hela said, when all of them had drunk, and Thor let her take a pull of it. "I like it," she said. "It's sparkly. Save me some more for later." 

"Jesus," Steve Rogers muttered, and rising walked away from them to another corner of the jet, lowering himself to his knees: perhaps he spoke with his gods. Thor did not think they would answer him: but he was grateful for the attempt, nonetheless. 

The rest of them passed around the bottle again, and Stark then closed it and set it aside. With nothing more said his friends rose one after another and went to their own seats, leaving them in privacy. Hela said, "I'm glad I saw the Empire State Building." She yawned. "Mommy, can I have my own chair? I want to have some more dreams." 

"Yes," Thor said, though in truth he was reluctant to release her. Another seat stood facing them: it reclined at the touch of its controls, and they settled Hela upon it, and covered her lightly. She slept easily and quickly beneath their eyes, and after a little while gazing on her, they returned to their own seats and watched her for a time together. 

Thor tried to tell himself that many a mortal child had journeyed to the dead with less knowledge of the universe, less time to taste all the beauty that life offered; at least she had enjoyed some little share of time and pleasure. It was cold comfort. 

"She'll be a power there," Loki said aloud. "She will be unbound: of the dead, but untouched by the hand of death itself. Even the guardians will have no power over her—" He sounded as though he, too, sought to comfort himself, and then he shuddered all at once and turning blindly came into Thor's arms, muffling the animal noise of his weeping against his chest that Hela would not wake and hear. 

Thor held him close; the storm passed swiftly. Three great heaving sobs broke free, raw and open-mouthed; he felt them like blows, and then Loki quietened and stilled against him once more; in a few moments he stirred, and Thor opened his arms to let him draw away, back into his own chair. Loki breathed heavily a while longer. Without meeting Thor's gaze he said abruptly, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept her from you." 

"I forgive you, brother," Thor said, quietly. It seemed to him now that the universe had meant it so, that he should not have been worn down by grief and able to give Loki strength now, when most he would need it: it would have to be his hand that opened the way for her, as his had first closed her into the body that she wore. 

Loki nodded slightly. He passed a hand across his face to carry away the tears. "I'm going with her," he said. 

"I know," Thor said. "We both shall go." 

Loki looked at him as though startled. "What?" 

Thor was confused at first: what was he asking? And then in sudden and rising indignation he understood that Loki had thought—Loki had _expected_ —that Thor would—would stand by? Watch as they perished, and went into the arms of death without him? 

"Did you imagine I would be parted from you both in such a way?" he demanded, torn between wrath and horror. "That I should let her go alone, or you alone with her, that I should set you on that dark road without me?"

"But—" Loki said again. He gathered himself and said, "We will not go to Valhalla, Thor; she is not a warrior, and—and I—" 

Thor glared at him, and would have shaken him, if the chairs were not inconveniently placed. "Have done," he growled, warning. 

Loki stopped and then said, again as though he did not believe, "You're coming with us." 

That was enough: Thor half-rose from his seat, but Hela's voice sleepy halted him. "Mommy, don't be mad at him, he doesn't know you love him." 

"What?" Thor said, blankly. He stared at Loki, who did not meet his gaze, but hunched a little like a resentful snail withdrawing into a shell. 

"I know _how_ you love me," Loki said. "Your poor, pathetic brother, never _quite_ a real warrior—good enough to be an advisor and a court jester, perhaps, if only he'd come back to heel, though half-mad and of evil lineage—" 

"We are of the same lineage!" Thor broke in bewildered. "As you yourself learned; what are you—is this some strange jest? Do you say this nonsense because—because—" His imagination failed: he could never follow Loki's more convoluted plots. But Loki merely eyed at him sidelong, like a wary animal in fear of a blow; Thor flung his hands up: if one _might_ beat sense into him, he would have done it sooner than now. 

"You are my brother!" he said. "You have been the companion of my heart all our lives. We lay in one cradle; we fought side by side. Even when I was fool enough to think myself ready to be king, and prideful enough to think myself above others, I never imagined ruling without you by my side and your wisdom in my ears. I thought our paths would forever be entwined, and rejoiced for it. It was _you_ who thrust me aside, who would have stood alone and apart from me." 

Loki stared at him as though Thor had told him aught he did not already know; as though Thor had not pleaded with him, had not begged him a hundred times to leave off, to return home—"And I will wring your neck if you dare to say another word doubting me," Thor added, dangerously, when Loki opened his lips again at last. 

Loki hesitated and said nothing. Thor shook his head. "You _are_ mad," he said. "How long have you been dwelling in bitterness on this folly?" 

"I am _not_ mad," Loki snapped. "How am I to know where I stand in your heart? How was I ever? You would throw your life away for humans you don't even know; you surround yourself with a host of companions so great you would never miss my voice, you do not sorrow for my absence—" 

"Do not sorrow—!" Thor seized Loki by the throat and _did_ throttle him, then; Loki scrabbled at his arms choking a moment, and then gripped him by the elbows and stung him with a burst of magic like wasps biting all the length of his forearms. Thor stifled a shout and caught Loki's wrists, twisted him out of his chair and down upon the floor, pinned beneath one hand, and triumphantly made ready, as Loki yelped and squirmed, to knock his head upon the ground—

"Uh, Thor?" Stark called. "Everything okay over there?"

Thor looked up awkwardly: his friends were all risen from their chairs and staring at him warily. From the floor beneath him Loki twisted over onto his back and said, "You _do_ recall we're in a flying shell no thicker than your thumb." 

Thor glared down at him. "If _you_ recall it, you might have done provoking me!" 

"Very well!" Loki said. "You love me, you missed me. I believe you. Let me up." 

He said it as though to make mock, but his eyes betrayed him: as he spoke they darted one uncertain and yet desperate look at Thor's face, as one who hopes against his own judgement, and Thor sighed as his anger fled him again untimely. "I do," he said gently. "I did," and let Loki rise. 

The exchange at least muzzled Loki's doubts, if it did not excise them, and left him in his seat contemplating his own hands, with an uncertain look upon his face but also a kind of quietness. The scuffling had eased something in Thor's own heart as well. He still scarcely understood, but was nevertheless glad to have lanced this canker in Loki's heart, before they departed mortal life, not to carry poison with them into death. 

He ached yet for Hela's sake: he longed to have shown her a thousand wonders of the realms, not to hasten her away to the dead for safety; and he feared his father and mother's sorrow. To reave them of both sons and the grandchild they would never know, in one dreadful stroke, was a cruel fate indeed; and Thor did not know where their father would turn for an heir. 

But these things he could not change. What he could do, he would: he would guard Hela to the gate, and help Loki to raise the pyre for them there; he would hold them in his arms for the last little while, as the flame took them. Then together they would go down the final road, and they would not be parted again: not until the cycle turned once more, until Yggdrasil fell and the new tree rose. 

It was an end that he could face, if not with a wholly glad heart, then one at peace. He expelled a deep breath, not a sigh but a letting go; he would grieve no longer. He reached out impulsively and caught one of Loki's hands away from where they twisted in his lap, and entwined their fingers: the simple comfort of touch was welcome. Loki looked down at their joined hands, but made no effort to draw away. 

Hela had drifted away again and slumbered peacefully before them, wandering in the vividness of mortal dreams. Thor gazed on her a while in love. A curiosity rose suddenly, as he contemplated her; he said, "Tell me, brother—"

"Hm?" Loki glanced at him. 

"Why does she call me mother?" Thor said. "Surely it was you who bore her, and I who engendered her?" 

Loki threw him a sly, lowered look under his lashes. "That's not how _I_ remember it," he said, heavy with insinuation, and Thor flushed hotly in sudden memory. He had stood in Valhalla, he had taken one step towards Loki, and abruptly been in his grasp: a struggling spirit with Loki's hands loving and desperate upon him the only thing he knew, their grasp curling deep into his self to anchor him. He had only dimly sensed anything of the world on their return, barred from sensation by the lack of his body. And then Loki had—Loki had taken him in, sheltered him: Thor remembered the long sliding fall into flesh not his own, Loki's thoughts and heart a hungry tangle around him, seeming at once to welcome him and consume him, an intimacy of all kinds at once. 

Loki leaned in and murmured, "In case you're wondering, you were _delicious_ ," laughter running beneath his voice, low and deliberately husky, and Thor felt abruptly fired with lust. 

"Loki!" he said, startled and asking all at once. 

Loki paused. "Really?" he said, in some surprise. And then, "Oh," and Thor knew it had taken him too. Thor had never thought of him as a lover, before; they had been companions in lovemaking often enough, but as in battle, going forth together to conquer side by side, in their own ways. He had heard women and men both cry out in delight beneath Loki's hands, and knew the sound of his sighs, the soft lap of his tongue that could drive a lover to utter silence, the groan he often gave as he took possession and the more languorous breath when he yielded. But Thor had never brought them forth with his own hands, never tasted them with his own body. 

It now seemed merely an oversight: they had shared all else. Indeed, far beyond in some ways, and yet Thor loved the joining of sex as much as he loved battle: demanding the same union of spirit and will and all the force of the body. He had no desire to disdain it, even by comparison against the deeper intimacies they had enjoyed. And he was deeply, hungrily aware, thinking of it now, that Loki had the strength to bear all that his own body could give, and to return equal measure: surely it was no ill way to pass some final hours of their mortal existence.

Loki leaned forward and murmured a charm over Hela's seat, which lay a glimmering net upon her, to let him know if she woke; then he rose. Thor went to tell Stark quietly, "We will be in one of the bedchambers: I promise we will have a care for the jet," that they would not fear. "If Hela rouses, we will come at once." 

"Uh," Stark said, gazing up at him with a peculiar expression, which Thor could not understand; it seemed oddly dismayed. "This is something we're going to have to try very hard not to think about, right?" 

"We're only going to have sex," Loki said cheerfully, coming up behind Thor; there was a gleam in his eye which Thor eyed suspiciously: it looked like malice. But Loki only caught him by the neck and leaned in and kissed him, sweet and long and hot with promise. "I hope you all too pass a comfortable few hours of the journey," he added to the rest of the company, his voice roughened, when they had parted. "We'll try not to be _too_ noisy. Come, brother," and Thor gladly went with him to the nearest bedchamber. 

Loki took him first, a long thorough claiming with mouth and hands and cock. Thor soon forgot to be quiet as Loki tormented him with his tongue, quicksilver squirming between his legs, coaxing him urgent and open, fingertips teasing at him with the fragrant unguents Loki magicked to them from the bathing chamber. Thor was ready long before Loki at last satisfied him, joined them with the hard length of his cock plunging inside; and even then Loki yet teased him a long while with shallow strokes. Thor groaned with the last of his patience and cried, "Loki! I want yet to have _you,_ " plaintively: games were all very well, but they did not have a month for bedsport. 

"Oh, very well," Loki said, and pressed Thor's legs back, drove himself deep, and laying his hand on Thor's breast sent a bright cold spark of magic running through him, bringing alight every nerve, every sinew of his body, leaving a trail behind. For but a few moments, and then the spark reached the place where Loki speared him and ignited, and the blinding flare of pleasure followed back along all those trails and brought them both to a shuddering climax. 

Loki fell off him and they lay limp and gasping a while side by side; but Thor did not long let himself enjoy the heavy satiation of his body. His cock was wet already, and Loki's body for once relaxed and gone soft with his own climax. Thor got upon him and pressed within easily, a single steady filling thrust. Loki wrapped his thighs around Thor's waist, and Thor joyfully fucked him with hard pounding strokes, Loki gasping encouragement beneath him, and occasionally holding him off a few moments to prolong their pleasure. 

Thor kissed him deeply at last and closed his hand about Loki's cock to bring him: only a little while remained to them of the journey's allotted time, and he wished to rouse Hela and share a final meal with her and his friends. Loki sighed half-reluctantly but yielded; he curled his arm around Thor's neck and brought forward his hips to meet the final strokes. He arched and shuddered in Thor's arms, and Thor groaning buried himself deep within and loosed at last. 

Loki shuddered again, and Thor felt the spark of it: they might have made another child here if they had put forth an effort, he realized, but this time one given flesh also and not only spirit. He felt a sharp regret suddenly: if he had been wise enough to find his way sooner to unbinding Loki's heart, might they have brought Hela forth properly housed, as she deserved? 

"We would never have had her at all," Loki said, running his fingers through Thor's hair. "Would _you_ ever have thought to make a child with me, _brother_? We would have thought this perverse if we had come to it by any other way." 

"Perhaps," Thor said, letting his head sink upon Loki's breast a moment to rest beneath his stroking touch. "But we are not barred from it by blood, after all; we might have thought of it, in a time, if we had come once again to peace between us." 

Loki snorted. "Yes, a most splendidly eligible—" 

He halted abruptly, his hand stilling; it clenched within Thor's hair. Thor raised up his head and saw Loki staring like marble. "What is it?" he asked. 

Loki laughed suddenly, a short mirthless gasp. "Oh. That's why, of course. That's _why_." 

"What?" Thor said, in confusion. 

"Why Odin took me," Loki said. "Laufey did tell me, after all. Bestla, who married an Aesir, and corrupted her line, so that sorcery dies out of it. So Odin brought home another descendant of Ymir for you to make an heir with, so that in our child two of his lines would meet, and make a great renewal of sorcery within the kings of Asgard. He meant for this, all along." 

Loki laughed again, his voice breaking, and Thor rose up swiftly to take his face in his hands and kiss him hard and firmly, hushing the jangling noise of it. "Enough," he said. "Loki, cease tormenting yourself so. Think on Hela: if she were not under this doom, what would you see her life become?" Loki stared at him. "Would you not see her either a queen, or a carefree wanderer among the endless worlds? A great warrior, a great sorceress, or a great scholar; a weaver or a potter perhaps, her hands wet with clay? Wed to a lord worthy of her, the mother of noble heirs? What dreams and hopes would you not harbor for her?"

He shook Loki by the shoulders. "So has our father dreamed for us, a thousand dreams. If some of those dreams are for Asgard's sake and not merely our own, so be it: he is a king; if he has lied to us sometimes, even the wise are fallible. But he has not bound us to one path. We are not mere tools in his hands, either of us. We are his sons."

Loki heaved a deep breath beneath his grip and leaned in and pressed his forehead against Thor's. His brow felt cool, to bear so fevered a spirit; Thor stroked Loki's dark head. "Trust me," he said, "and do not go to the long parting with this hatred lingering in your heart." 

"It's all I've had," Loki said, barely audible, stripped naked to honesty at the last, and Thor might have wept to hear him say such a thing and mean it for truth. 

"Never," Thor said. "And never shall be, so long as we are together on either side of death."

They rose and arrayed themselves again; Loki whispered cantrips to cleanse them, and Thor called forth his full armor and raiment across time and space from Asgard; there was no longer cause to save it against greater need. It shone within the chamber with all its deep spells of strengthening and power, golden with all Asgard's warmth. 

Loki looked at him, and then with a ghost of a smile called his own as well, though he had left it untouched and abandoned standing in the armory of the citadel all this while, when he might have easily have taken it and turned it to his use. Its virtues swathed him in concealments, the shadows of the room deepening round him where he stood, gathering in the long folds of his cloak, and reflections crowded into the gleam of his steel. 

Thor smiled at him, his heart full: they would go forth together as princes of Asgard, as was fitting, and unafraid. 

Together they left the chamber, and found the others already at table, with drink standing before them; Stark's head was buried in his arms. Barton was leaning back at the table's far end, his feet upon the table's edge, with his own drink in his hand; he squinted as they came to the table. "Nice outfits," he said. "Had a good time?"

Stark raised his head and gazed reproachfully upon Barton for some reason; but Thor smiled at him. "We have taken full measure of the pleasures of the flesh, my friend, I thank you; now would I gladly raise a final cup with all of you this day, and feast you ere the end: I am only sorry," he added, "that I shall have no chance to welcome you to table in Asgard itself." 

He looked at Loki hopefully, and Loki with a flick of his eyes upward spread forth his hand and murmured: a feast unrolled itself upon the long table, beneath the startled hands and eyes of his friends. Thor went to bring Hela, who stirred and rubbed her eyes and lifted her arms to him; he carried her to the table and held her in his arms there upon his lap. 

"Thor," Natasha said, when he had come back, "when you say a final cup—" 

"Ha!" Loki said, sitting up sharply, pointing at him. "Ha! They didn't think you would, either!" 

Thor glared at him, and a little at Natasha, as well. "Of course I will go with Loki and Hela," he said, and was taken aback when they all gazed at him in dismay; how could they have expected anything else?

"You're _all_ planning to—" Steve Rogers said, his voice rising. "And you want us to celebrate?" 

"Not our death," Thor said, "but our lives, and our fellowship: have you no such custom, here, when one has foreknowledge that they must soon depart from life?" 

They were silent all, looking at one another; it was Bruce Banner first stretched forth his hand and took up the cup, and said quietly, "We're going to miss you." 

It _was_ unfamiliar to them though, Thor realized, as they began unenthusiastically to eat; they were trying but seemed bewildered a little, and unable to take real pleasure in the feasting. He looked anxiously to Loki, who with a sigh blotted his lips and broke the heaviness of the company with the malicious tale of Gefjun's turning her sons into oxen to plow for her. 

"Wait, what?" Stark said, lifting his head from morose contemplation of his plate. "She _plowed_ half of Sweden out of the ocean?" He looked at Thor. "That's not true."

"It took her some weeks," Thor said. 

"And then, of course," Loki added blandly, "she left them that way." 

"She turned her kids into cows and left them?" Banner said, eyebrows rising. 

"She claimed to have forgotten," Loki said. "Of course, they _were_ four of the most stupid louts ever to grace the court, but I'm sure she wouldn't have let that influence her." 

He moved to other tales and jests, and little by little the others began to share their own. All the while Hela listened to them with hungry interest, and carefully imitated as Thor showed her court manners: how to cut the meat with her knife, and take it by the point to her mouth, and how to drink from the horn without its overflowing. Loki had summoned an array of delicacies, drawn by his art from far-flung places, and she sampled them all with tiny bites: the golden light beneath her skin grew the greater, as she pressed nearer to the surface of the flesh, the better to taste. There was now at least no need for her to stifle herself, to smother the brightness of her spirit.

"I can have my own chair," she announced, after a little practice, and Thor regretfully let her go and draw one up to the table; she disdained even his help to climb into it herself, and began skillfully to spear the wriggling hamak from the bowl nearby onto her platter, where she neatly sliced away their heads and popped the rest into her mouth as he had shown her, avoiding their still-gnashing teeth with her fingers. 

Steve Rogers was on her other side, watching with a slightly distressed expression; but when Thor had glanced away, to answer a question Natasha had made him, he bent and said to Hela, "Hela, listen, you have a right to say no to this. I'll—" He hesitated, then said with determination, "I'll figure something out. I'll find a way to—" 

Hela paused with the next head in her fingers and looked up at him. "Why are _you_ afraid of the realm of the dead?" she said. "You know what it is, don't you?" 

He grew pale beneath her levelled gaze, his breathing shallower, but he swallowed and said, "That doesn't mean I'm in any hurry for you to get there before you belong."

She shrugged. "I belong there now," she said. "Daddy and Mommy don't, but they'll fix that." 

"They're going to—you don't mind that they're going to—" 

"No?" Hela said. "Why would I mind?" She looked down at her plate and lifted one of the hamak before him, and then with a quick twist she wrenched off its head and pulled out the spine and held out the severed parts. "Do you mind that the eel is dead?" 

Rogers stared down at it. "I—could have done without that, yes." 

"Oh," Hela said, looking down at the hamak. "I'm sorry. I thought we were supposed to eat them." 

"You _are_ supposed to eat them," Loki said across the table. "The mortal's just squeamish; stop trying to explain to him." 

"Do not be unkind, brother." Thor reached over Hela's chair and clasped Rogers on the shoulder. "It was a valiant offer," he said warmly, "and a generous one, when the cost would be the destruction of your world, and all creation after. But my friend, the cost to Hela would be the greater; this is not a sacrifice we make of her, but a flight from deadly danger." 

His friends seemed little by little to be comforted, and to understand; Thor hoped it was so, at least. The jet had begun its descent at last, and Natasha murmured a word to Clint and rose from the table; he passed the word along and one after another they all went and returned, before the landing, arrayed in their finest weapons and garb: Thor was touched by the gesture. 

They set forth together in another of Stark's chariots, swiftly running. It was night still in this country, though dawn crept near: a good time, Thor thought. They had opened the windows, and the cool air came in to stir his hair; he turned to Loki, who now held Hela nestled close against his side, and stroked her cheek, taking the last brief moments to his heart; Loki looked up and smiled back at him, simply for once, with nothing deeper working beneath it. 

At last they had reached the shores of the lake. The chariot withdrew to wait at a respectful distance, to carry their friends away, afterwards. Thor clasped Steve Rogers' hand, and Stark's, and Barton's, and kissed Natasha's hands; she reached up and kissed both his cheeks. 

Bruce Banner stepped forward afterwards, to clasp his hands as well. "The, uh. The other guy wants to be there," he said. "Since he couldn't make it to dinner. So I guess this is goodbye." 

Thor clasped his hand as well. "Fare well, Bruce Banner," he said. "You have been a staunch ally and a true: may we meet one day again, on the other side of death." 

Banner nodded, and then shuddering swelled away into Hulk's great form, which gazed with mute unhappiness down and said, "Hulk not want Thor to go again." 

"But yet you know why it must be," Thor said. Hulk remained silent, but jerked his head unwilling and stiffly in a nod. Thor reached forth both his hands to clasp the heavy fist. 

Loki stood with Hela, waiting; her head was upon his shoulder. Thor fell in with him and together they walked to the stair descending into the dark. The dawn had begun to limn the empty bowl of the amphitheater: the ruin of bare stone would serve well to hold the pyre. 

"Wait," Natasha said suddenly, and Thor halted at the head of the stairs. There was a strange stillness in the air over the lake, a glassy silence. 

"What is it?" Steve Rogers said after a moment, low, behind them. Thor heard a small fall of pebbles: Clint had already leapt for high ground, atop the walls nearest them, and he had unslung his bow. 

Loki slowly raising a hand called light, a rising blaze of sorcery that crept into every crevice of the stairs, rolled down towards the amphitheater, and lit all its cavernous space wide. The floor was barren and shattered, the walls half-fallen, but all was empty. Naught seemed out of place to Thor's eye, though he remembered the place but dimly. 

"The weeds," Natasha said. "All the weeds are gone." She paused. "I don't see—do any of you see any birds? Any insects?" 

"What does that mean?" Tony said. 

"It's here," Loki said. He had Hela drawn close against his heart, as though he would have hidden her therein. "It's already here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this one was a monster. The next one's the last! Hope you all are still enjoying this crazy ride. :)
> 
> All fb loved, here or on [lj](http://astolat.livejournal.com) or [tumblr](http://astolat.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/intimations)!


	16. Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve was almost glad, as they backed away; however bad this was going to be, he couldn't imagine anything being worse than what they'd been planning to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long delay, but here's the ending at last, as my hobbit birthday present! Hope you all enjoy. :)

Steve was almost glad, as they backed away; however bad this was going to be, he couldn't imagine anything being worse than what they'd been planning to do: to put a child, a _child_ , to death, like some kind of horrible pagan sacrifice. Iphigenia, or the baby thrown off the walls of Troy.

And yeah, he got it, this could get a lot worse than death for her and for a lot of other kids too, but he still couldn't help feeling like someone had just handed him a reprieve. However bad this got, even if it went all the way—okay. God could handle restarting the universe. It was up to them to keep it worth restarting.

So he was grateful, and he was going to do—he was going to do something, he hadn't figured out what yet, but he was going to fight with everything he had, whatever it took, and he would've done that anyway, but he would be able to go into it glad because he hadn't had to be a part of that.

"Thor," he said. "What's the plan? How should we—" He stopped, turning, because Thor wasn't going to answer him. Thor looked like someone had just ripped him open from collarbone to groin and he just hadn't gotten around to dying yet. He had his arms around Loki and Hela, and if anything could have convinced Steve that this sacrifice they'd been planning was anything like the only way, it would've been his face: the utter lack of hope.

"Guys," he said sharply, but the others all looked the same way, hollowed out and nothing but despair in their faces, staring down into the pit. In Loki's arms, Hela looked empty, her eyes staring like a corpse and the arms and legs dangling limp, as though she'd pulled back inside herself to hide. Even the Hulk looked scared and miserable, hunching away like a kid expecting to get hit.

Steve followed their gaze down the steps and he thought he saw it, maybe, some hint of something moving that didn't have a shape his brain could fit to it, not even a weird half-imagined one like Yggdrasil, like the ants. "Listen to me," he said, turning away, "whatever this is—however this is going to end—we're not going to lie down for this. Clint—"

Clint stirred a little and looked at him. "Get up into those trees," Steve said, pointing. "Lay down some cover fire on those stairs. Nataha, stay with him, use your sense—if we can't see it, give us your best read where it is."

They both were silent, still; Steve reached up and shook Clint by the arm, caught Natasha with his other hand, gave them both a shake. "Come on, people, move!" he snapped, military crisp, and Clint shook his head abruptly like a dog and then jumped for the lowest branch. Natasha nodded once, stiffly, and was moving behind him.

Steve turned to the others. "Hulk," he said, and pausing added softly, "—Bruce. I need you as our anchor. Whatever this is, if anyone can hold the line, it's you. Can you do that?"

Hulk kept his head lowered, his shoulders hunched over. "Hulk not like it," he said, in a voice that was almost small. "Hulk scared."

Steve swallowed. "Yeah," he said quietly, "me too, pal. Can you be brave anyway?"

He hesitated, then he put his hand on Hulk's huge arm. Hulk looked down at it. "Hulk be brave," he said. "OK."

Tony hadn't closed his faceplate. The pale glow inside made him look sickly, deepened the shadows at the corners of his mouth. "Hey," Steve said, and he felt stupid, but touch seemed to be helping, so he reached in and—

Tony blinked once, twice, and slowly refocused on him. "Did you just boop me in the nose?"

"Well—" Steve said.

"No, forget it, fine, we're making a stand," Tony said. "It'll eat the universe over our dead bodies. Almost certainly that's going to be literally true, but we'll give it a hell of a case of indigestion. Got it. Where do you want me?"

"Stay off the ground and out of its reach," Steve said. "Look for any weaknesses, take any opening Hulk and Thor and I can give you." He reached out for Thor, and then even for Loki, and saw them stir too. "Thor," he said, "we need you in the front line, too. You, me, and Hulk. And Loki—Loki's her final line of defense."

He looked at Loki, who was staring at him with a sudden almost terrible look on his face. "Right?" Steve said to him, half challengingly.

"No," Loki said, and bending his head kissed Hela on her brow and then abruptly held her out; Steve caught her automatically and found himself with an armful of small dead girl. Hela stirred in his arms and her face went less empty; she looked up at him out of her green eyes.

" _You_ are her final defense," Loki said. "Keep her safe," and with a nod to Thor he stepped up, on Hulk's other side, and shaped a glowing spear out of the air in his hands.

#

"It's moving," Natasha said abruptly, from just behind his shoulder, and Clint started to shoot blind, trying less to hit the thing than _find_ it, just to even get at the shape of it. The taste of helplessness and despair was still lingering where Steve had somehow shoved it into the back of his throat, but he could move again.

His shots were hitting something, or more like not-hitting it: whatever it was, they were bouncing off. The ones that missed hit the ground, explosives going off and kicking up dust and dirt and dead leaves in a cloud that began to define a space, not so much a thing but vaguely where it might be.

And _it_ was coming. The cloud stirred and moved, eddied around something almost flowing up the broken stairs, coming for them all. Down below, Loki suddenly said a word, something that rang loud and cold and hard in Clint's ears, and a blazing dart jumped from his hand and flung into the cloud at whatever was inside. There was a bright flash: impact, and Clint scowled. Fine, maybe he'd die petty, but it still pissed him off Loki had made contact and he couldn't put an arrow in the thing. Not that Loki's shot seemed to have done much good. Nithhogg kept on rolling gently and horribly up the stairs, getting closer.

Clint looked back at Natasha. She met his eyes; they didn't need to say a word. He hadn't used them, any of them, the explosives she'd brought him back. He had dreams about them sometimes though: dreams where he let an arrow fly and he saw too late that he'd put on one of the wrong explosives, dreams where he watched the arrow arc up and sink into the ground and burst, a thousand cracks spiderwebbing slowly out of it, and he saw them open into horrible chasms full of glowing silver light—chasms that grew, and grew, swallowing trees and cities, and he ran but they still came on until he fell with open hands grasping, and woke up before he hit the light.

Sometimes he checked his arrows twice just to make sure they were safe. Tony had given him another ordinary set of the same explosives and Clint had handed them back, made Tony change the color of the casings and add a notch on the back that he could feel with his thumb when he pulled the arrows out.

But now or never, he figured. "Get 'em for me, will you?" he said to Natasha quietly, and she nodded. While he put down another dozen shots, she got the compartment in the quiver open, and drew out the case. He could see her hands working quick and sure out of the corner of his eye while he kept firing, and then she said, "Ready." He reached over his shoulder, pushed the button, and when he slid his thumb over the smooth back of the first cartridge, a cold tingle crawled up his arm.

"Here goes nothing," Clint said, sighted down the line at the cloud, at the peak of it rising at the top of the stairs, and let the arrow go.

It flew, beautiful, shining, and it hit cloud dead on. The trigger went—he saw the blue flash—then nothing. Nothing happened.

Clint said, "Well, that was—"

Natasha drew in a sharp breath. "I see it," she said, harshly. "I can see it," and a shrill screaming noise like metal tearing was rising into the air.

#

Scary thing big and ugly! Scary thing yelling. Hulk not scared of scary thing anymore. Puny scary thing whining about stupid arrow.

Hulk smash scary thing in mouth. Maybe in mouth. Hulk not sure. Scary thing have lots of round holes with sharp bits. Maybe that one is mouth? Hulk smash it too!

Hawkeye hits scary thing again with arrow. Hulk see more of scary thing. Ugly. Hulk not like it! Hulk not want scary thing! Thor hits scary thing too. Loki hits scary thing. Hulk hits more. Hulk hits hardest. Hulk stronger than Asgardians, ha ha.

Other guy say watch out. Scary thing try to bite Hulk. Ha! That real mouth! Hulk smash it.

"Barton, spread your arrows!" Loki shouting. "The dark energy gives Nithhogg form we can strike."

More arrows. More of scary thing. Scary thing big. Scary thing _very_ big. OK, maybe scary thing still scary. Hulk smash anyway.

Other guy say hit scary thing all at same time. "OK," Hulk says. Hulk poke Loki.

"What are you _doing_ , you idiotic beast?" Loki snaps. Loki rude.

Hulk shove Loki. "Hit scary thing. Hit scary thing _together_."

Loki says, "What?" Dumb Loki. But Thor says, "Yes! Make ready!"

Thor swing hammer. Thor swing hammer round and round. Thunder. Hulk not like thunder. But OK for this. Scary thing also not like thunder, maybe. "Now!" Thor yells.

Hulk hit scary thing. Loki hit scary thing. Thor hit scary thing! Lightning! Scary thing yelling! Scary thing mad! Ha ha.

Tony Stark shoot scary thing too, in same place. Boom!

Hulk keep hitting scary thing there. Smash, smash, smash. Scary thing not go down. OK. Hulk keep smashing.

#

"Jesus," Tony said under his breath, hovering above. He could see the charred stumps of Clint's arrows sticking up out of the thing like stakes planted in the ground. It wasn't even a thing, just a misshapen lumpy grayish mound of mouths and teeth and flesh that didn't make sense. But the arrows were markers in featureless ground: he could look at them and get his bearings.

He didn't really want his bearings, though. The mass of the thing sprawled down the stairs and into the pit of the amphitheater, filling the space, but what had Tony fairly concerned was that it didn't _stop_ there. Everything they were seeing was just—one little piece of something worse, something that had shoved into their world through the floor of the amphitheater. How big did a thing have to be to eat the entire universe? It didn't like the arrows or the good hard pummeling it was getting right now courtesy of Hulk and the Norse Wonder Twins, but it wasn't hitting back at them, not really. Maybe that was because they were biting its big toe and the hand coming to swat them was a few galaxies away.

Tony looked down into one of the open mouths. There was nothing he could see inside but black. "Jarvis, load up the probe subroutine into one of the mini-Jerichos," he said. "Let's take a peek inside."

"Twenty-three percent. Seventy-eight percent," Jarvis said, "—and ready." It popped up on his shoulder; Tony fired: the missile darted between three sets of teeth and into one of the gaping mouths, blazing, burning up its payload to create two tiny spotlights instead of an explosion. Jarvis threw up the 360-degree video stream on Tony's HUD as three screens: middle screen tiny figure of himself in the Iron Man suit framed between two jagged teeth; left screen the spotlight searching endless black, right screen the same.

"Stream's locked up," Tony said: the images weren't changing.

"No, sir," Jarvis said. "The data is coming. The rate is merely slow."

On the screen, he was getting a little bit smaller, but not by much. "Any other data?" Tony said. "What—hey," he said; the flashlight lines on both screens were curving. "Are those hitting something?" Tony said, starting to have a bad feeling.

"I'm getting very strange readings, sir. They may be unreliable."

"Like what?" Tony said.

"The probe is sending its data with timestamps from the future," Jarvis said.

Tony landed next to Loki and grabbed his arm. Loki yanked back his spear out of the thing's body and turned to glare at him. "What is this thing?" he demanded. "Is this a—is there a black hole in there?"

"Nithhogg is the singularity," Loki snapped at him.

"You mean _a_ singularity," Tony said.

"I do _not_ ," Loki said. "I mean _the_ singularity." He seized the spear in both hands and drove it into a staring eye; a blast of magic rippled out of it and scorched another half-dozen.

"So there's a black hole in there," Tony said. Or close enough anyway; Loki was just being a dick. "How the hell do you beat a black hole?"

"You _don't_ ," Loki said.

"Thanks, Negative Nellie," Tony said. "Would it help to get it out of the event horizon?"

"No!" Loki said. "The event horizon is all that protects us from interaction with its real nature."

"And what's that? Chaos?" Tony said.

"Of course not," Loki said. " _We_ are chaos, Stark. Life is disordered and nonsensical; all existence is absurd and fragmented and imperfect. Nithhogg is perfection and order. Why do you think it hates us so? _We_ are the flaw. And—" he interrupted to scorch another piece of slowly encroaching blob, "—this is hardly the time for a session of correcting your Midgardian fallacies!"

"See, that's where you'd be wrong," Tony said, and grabbing Loki managed to haul him back out of gaping mouth range for a moment. " _Listen_ to me for a second. You know what this lets me do?" He tapped the glowing circle in his chest. "As far as I can tell, _anything_ , as long as I can understand how it works. So you want me to start unraveling a black hole for you, start talking, and use words my puny human brain can understand."

Loki snarled at him, "What's between the square root of negative seven, and seventy-three times pi?"

"What?" Tony said. "That makes no sense. The square root of negative seven is an imaginary number, it's not on the number line, and why the hell seventy-three times pi, why not seventy-one or—"

"Shut up," Loki said, and spread his hands out flat, thumbs and index fingers touching to make a diamond. A latticework of white lines fell from his hands, twisting around one another into an incomprehensible mess. "Only your pathetic species would label numbers _imaginary_ and then suppose that this meant they really didn't exist."

"They don't!" Tony said. "Unless you're operating in a different universe."

"Yes!" Loki said. "Precisely. Now _go away_."

"Have I mentioned recently how much I hate you?" Tony said, and took off just in time to evade the first real blow, a slowly extruded pseudopod flung out like a club: Loki barely dived in the other direction, and Thor whirled to smash the limb away from them both, back into the main bulk of the body.

"If you'll forgive my saying so, sir," Jarvis said, "that was a singularly unhelpful conversation."

"No, it was great," Tony said, blasting two climbing arms that were trying to get up at Clint and Natasha's perch as he circled away. "Another universe. Okay. Let's posit those two numbers exist on a meaningful number line in some universe — "

"Oh, certainly," Jarvis said.

"Shut up," Tony said. "What would that universe look like? What's in between them on that line?"

The hell of it was, it tasted like the kind of question he _could_ have answered, if he'd only had a few years to wrestle with it and tear it apart and turn it inside out, the sort of thing he would have left in the back of his head to percolate and one day he'd wake up knowing all the answers — actually, usually the eureka moment happened while he was having sex, one of the many spectacular things about sex, which he would really miss if he died today, but the point was, right now he had about twenty minutes if they were lucky, and the way this day was going, luck did not really seem to be on their side.

_#_

Clint had spent all the altered explosives; now he was down to his last five arrows, and rationing those to fend off the limbs that were starting to come at them. Natasha had stayed with him; the thing down there wasn't on a human scale, not something her own weapons could touch, but she could aim him in the right direction.

Nithhogg had — soft spots: she didn't know what else to call them, but they looked different to her eyes, although she couldn't have described the difference in words: not color, not texture, not shape; they just _pulled_ at her, the same way that all her other _predictions_ had pulled. Like a moment of potential, something that didn't exist yet, but still might.

They lasted barely a moment and then faded away again. The harder Thor and Hulk and Loki hit, the more of them rippled away over the body. She'd been able to direct Clint well enough to hit some of them, and Nithhogg shuddered with those impacts.

She still didn't know how much good any of this was going to do. But she'd stayed; there was no better place for her to be, yet; and then abruptly she knew there was: she turned and saw Tony darting between swelling limbs, blasting them — halfheartedly, and she reached up and touched her communicator. "Stark," she said, "come over here."

He negotiated the battlefield to land a minute later. "Not that I'm ever sorry for a chance to ogle the two of you in your charming fight gear — "

"Give me the suit," Natasha said.

He opened the mask and stared at her. "What?"

She was increasingly sure. "Give me the suit," she snapped. "Clint, fall back with him to Steve. Whatever else you're trying to do," she said to Tony, "it's important: you have to focus on it. And I need to be in the field. _Give me the suit._ "

He stared a moment longer, then his face went grim, and he nodded. "Step back," he said, and shut his eyes, facing her. The light in his chest blazed, and the suit came apart around him into a thousand pieces, flying across the space between them; she held still while it assembled itself around her body, displays on six layers spreading out around her peripheral vision, weapons systems and propulsion and armor condition, pieces of data slotting into her head like parts of an operation.

Tony looked small and vulnerable standing on the battlefield now in just his t-shirt and pants and sneakers, but the bright glow of the silver circle was still shining out from his chest. He opened his eyes and nodded to her. Clint said, "Come on, Stark. Nat, watch your back out there." He laid down his last arrows in a row in the dirt down the amphitheater path, kicking up clouds of dust, and he and Tony took off towards where Steve had dug in, behind a low hill near the lake shore.

"Please do inform me if I can be of any assistance, Ms. Romanoff," Jarvis said in her ear. "All systems are ready."

"Then let's go," she said, and threw herself into the air, looking for a chance.

#

Thor could only be glad, with what room was left in him for gladness, that his friends did not truly understand what they fought: either the enemy, or the cause. The horror of it would shred them, surely; he could only barely keep to the battlefield himself, and only because there was nothing else to be done which would not have been still worse: to lie down and die, or to flee uselessly for a scant span of days or weeks or years with annihilation ever at their heels.

But that annihilation was utterly certain. Soon he would die, and he would know as he died that Hela would die soon as well, and all he loved after her. Asgard would stand alone to the very end of that final terrible war, a lonely wavering citadel as the worlds fell to Nithhogg's eager maw and rot climbed up the trunk of Yggdrasil, but the eternal city too at last would come down as the tree fell, a terrible crashing ruin that would nurture no new life, only a cold and dreadful disintegration.

And Thor would know as he died that the fault was his, for he had been weak. He had yielded and allowed Loki to lure him back, instead of remaining in the golden hall; he had succumbed to Loki's need and love and despair. Yet he could no more regret that failure than he could cease to fight.

But despair closed in ever nearer. When Thor struck, he saw faint ripples travel away across the hideous, half-unformed body, dying out like a pebble flung into a deep ocean; if Nithhogg recoiled, it was only for a moment. And still the great worm crept further on towards them, its great bulk rippling and increasing, misshapen tendril-limbs forming slowly out to strike, all the while its strength went on coalescing into the single great fist that would bring them down, in the end, with a single blow like the death of a star.

The Hulk slogged on beside him, blows tireless and with the rhythm of war-drums; Loki too fought with all his art, all his skill, a thing of silver and shadows and glimmering light. But even his beauty was another wound to Thor's heart: that he should have Loki again by his side, that they should have found their way past grievance and hatred back to love, only to see it all unmade so utterly. Thor wept as he fought, and dashed tears from his face with the back of his hand as he drew Mjolnir back to swing yet again.

Thor looked at Loki again nevertheless, for strength. Loki's face was fey and wild and illuminated with the pale light of his power; his lips moved slightly as he fought, on and on, perhaps with a death-song, making a lament for them, the only one that ever would rise to the boughs of Yggdrasil, for what little that mattered now.

Thor did not dare look back towards Hela. He would look that way once only. He would look when it was too late for her fear, her coming agony, to break him of the strength to fight; in the moment before death fell upon him. Until then — he fought on.

#

Loki ducked and rolled beneath another blow, his blades severing the limb above his head as he came up; the shivering mass of it fell upon the stones of the amphitheater and disintegrated. He could not let thought touch him, for fear of despair. He remained inside his body only: this muscle tightening, this tendon drawing short, this finger placed _here_ , elbow positioned here, point the toe, flowing with mathematical precision from one form to another, a turning now, arm snapping long, straight from the shoulder, lunge ahead, blade piercing the unreal flesh before him, sinking deep, straight out again, turn and step and step.

He shadowed Thor, and then the Hulk, letting his own blows echo theirs, driving into Nithhogg; then grudgingly, little by little, he began to fight at Romanoff's side, whose blows seemed to cause Nithhogg more injury, as though she somehow knew just where to strike. Each blow led directly to the next; she laid down starbursts of power from Stark's suit, constellations to mark the way, and Loki followed them with blades and felt the difference in the flesh he pierced, softer and more rotten, some essential weakness.

They struck again and again, and those soft places of corruption began to linger, for a second blow, a third; Nithhogg's body quivered and resentfully gathered towards them, trying to collect its strength. "Thor!" Loki cried, and saw Thor turn to look, saw him catch sight of the pattern; Thor in turn brought the Hulk's attention to it as well.

They were all fighting now in unison, following Romanoff's lead: an elaborate and whirling dance, that wound itself around the still-standing spikes of Barton's arrow-shafts, which still were fixing Nithhogg's shape. Loki realized, with a sudden, growing astonishment, that beneath that constraint Nithhogg was nevertheless putting forth still more of itself: more of its essence was pouring into that grey and swollen sac. This was no longer just a mere shadow of Nithhogg's being in the amphitheater with them: the worm was _here_ , present.

Romanoff was firing without cease now, marking more and still more places out for them, as many as all their strength and speed could possibly reach. Loki slammed his swords into two of the deepest pits of rot and left them there, and then fell further back and switched to knives. He spent them as quickly as he could form them, diving and twisting among the spawning tendrils, many thin snake-limbs that reached for him, for the flashing arrow that Natasha made aloft, that tried to wind around Thor's legs and the Hulk's until they stamped them away.

Fighting and fighting, Loki almost did not have room for breath or thought, but one thought could not help but come creeping slowly in, foolish and unbearable and _impossible_ : they were making progress. They were _holding_ Nithhogg. It was absurd, but they were doing it, somehow; they were containing the destroyer of worlds.

And that — that — made no sense at all. Of course they were still going to lose, eventually; the terrible mass of the worm would overwhelm them at last. But even this brief moment was too much success. If Loki had been given a span of years, a century perhaps, to design a defense against Nithhogg, he might have crafted such a delay from their joined powers, but there had been no span of years; the sheer coincidence that they should have found a way —

"Wait!" he heard Stark yell. "Wait, I got it! I've got it!"

Loki halted, on the edge of the amphitheater, and _saw_ : Thor and the Hulk and Romanoff stepping into places equidistant from him, arrayed as four points of a pentagram; he turned towards the fifth —

Stark had stepped in front of Rogers and Hela; he was drawing a ropey line of silver out of his chest, the ring blazing and his face caught in a rictus of strain. He was drawing it forth, and throwing the end to Barton, who tied it at evenly spaced distances to one arrow after another, launching them. One slammed into the ground at Loki's feet, only waiting for him to put out a hand.

"Pick it up!" Barton was yelling, over their comlink, through a hiss and crackle of endless static. "Pick up the line!"

Thor had already seized it at his point, smashing tendrils away with Mjolnir in his other hand; Romanoff dropped to the ground and took it up; the Hulk eyed it warily and shook his head and mumbled to himself and then at last put out his hand and grabbed it. Stark held the ends between his hands, ashen-faced but grinning savagely with victory, the _idiot_ , and behind him — behind him —

Behind him, Hela put out her hand and reached into Rogers' chest, through his back. He sank to his knees, his face wide and astonished with agony, mouth open. For a moment, Loki thought he would collapse, would break beneath it; he did not. He held in total silence, arms fallen out from his body, chest arched up, until she drew her hand back out again, with what the dead had given him, and then he fell to the ground like a hollowed sack.

It looked like nothing, lying like a small dark seed pod in her hand, oval and unremarkable. She put it up to her mouth and swallowed it, and in the small fragile husk of her borrowed body, Loki saw her green eyes turn black.

Loki stood panting, trembling in all his limbs, understanding at last. The taste of being manipulated was sour and nauseating in the back of his throat, bitterly familiar. Oh; he had hated Odin; he had hated Laufey; he had loved Thor, who was a stranger to anything like it. But of course, Hela was not only Thor's daughter. She was his, and their grandchild.

The years of agony: those first days with the hot terrible burn of her growing beneath his heart, as he struggled desperately to find something, _anything_ , that could house her before his spirit swallowed her own. The wrenching misery of watching her stumble in the first mortal body like a flailing puppet, arms jerking in spasmodic movements as she looked up at him with the wordless accusation of an infant: _why have you failed me, father?_

The grinding years of cowering in the shadows and low corners of human cities, the stench and refuse of Vegas, pretending to be a mortal, half making himself one, because every thought, every scrap of power he could spare, was all given to her, to the frantic effort to — _save her_. He wanted to laugh, helplessly, endlessly.

The sacrifices and promises he had made, the battles he had fought and the torments he had endured with the ash of despair always in his mouth, always, _always;_ the thousand things that _should_ have worked, the spells that failed, the bodies that disintegrated —

How long would she have kept him suspended in agony, always watching with patient green eyes, pretending to endure, while he failed and failed and failed again? As long as it took, surely; until Nithhogg at last picked up her scent and _took the bait_. When mortal bodies at last finally became inadequate — or rather, when Loki had believed them to have become inadequate — _something_ would surely have come along; one desperate attempt would have worked a little, just a little, enough to prolong his struggle —

The cord was at his feet, trembling around the arrow, blazing. Nithhogg was gathering itself in sudden alarm, at last perceiving the trap; in another moment it would fall upon one of them, it would smash one of them with all its might, and the pentagram would collapse. "Loki!" Thor shouted, across the amphitheater. "Loki!"

Hela moved forward over the ground, her stick-body graceful as a dancer's now, sleek: there was no more use in concealment. She moved past where Barton knelt beside Rogers' body, and reached out to take the lines where they met; Stark fell back, stumbling, and sank to the ground staring up at her. She did not look at him; she only brought the two ends together, and joined them, and then turned to look over at Loki.

Loki stared at her, allowed himself the luxury of a final moment of refusal, a moment of violent and savage hate: _I will not, I will not, though the tree falls forever I will not_.

"Please, father," she said, simply, and he reached down and took up the cord.

The points drew taut. Where the lines crossed one another, a pentagon formed, enclosing Nithhogg's body. The worm thrashed, the endless mouths opening and closing, a silent shriek of fury. It rose into a column and sank again; it tried to eel out beneath; it tried to fling itself against the bindings. It rose and fell and rose again, struggling, a pinned insect writhing and trying to be free, while Hela held the reins in her small withering hands: her arms were blackening with power, her thin mortal garments falling from her like the papery leaves of summer's end and darkness spreading over her like ink in a pool.

She brought it low at last, the grotesque shuddering mass of it collapsing lumpen at her feet, and the silver cords went slipping out of Loki's fingers, out of all their fingers, to draw tight all around it. Hela stepped forward, swaying and stretched tall, a pillar of black and painful to look upon, her limbs almost undefined; but the ends of the silver lines were still clenched and blazing in one fist, and she laid the hand of a possessor upon the worm's stained and rotting flesh.

She looked around, no child anymore and Loki did laugh, helplessly, full of hatred and adoration: his daughter, bringing the worm to heel; and then he sank to his knees and wept, his hands scorched and flaking, marked with the raw charred line of the rope across palm and fingers, because his child was gone.

  
  



	17. Epilogue

"So this time around we saved reality as we know it, the entire fabric of the space-time continuum, and every possible universe that might ever exist, right?" Tony said. He was lying curled on his side at the edge of the amphitheater. Down in the bowl of it, Hela was making her new pet climb back through the hole it had made in the fabric of time and space and reality to get here in the first place. Apparently she was planning to ride it home. Thor was still trying to get in some bonding time with her, but his attention was split: Loki was still huddled in misery and laughing softly to himself in a corner, tears sliding down his face.

"I just want to make sure I'm getting the bragging rights straight," Tony added.

"Looks like it," Bruce said. "Do you feel like standing up yet?"

"Not even remotely," Tony said. "Is Steve okay?"

"He hasn't woken up yet," Bruce said. "But as far as we can tell, everything still seems to be working fine. Clint called Fury: there's a paramedic team on the way."

Tony figured that if he'd earned some fetal position time, that had to go extra for Steve. Actually, being unconscious for a while sounded great. He fumbled into his pocket and got out his phone. He put it on the ground and poked it with one finger, laboriously texted Pepper, _saved_ _everything_ _, survived, see you soon_. He closed his own eyes.

When he opened them again, the _thing_ was gone. Hela was standing in the middle of the amphitheater, and it was her voice that had woken him up, echoing up against the stones: it wasn't the thin reedy fragile voice of the dead girl anymore. She sounded — she sounded like his mother and his father talking at the same time, in unison; his gut clenched to hear it.

"Won't you say goodbye to me?" she said softly, and apparently she was asking Loki. He was standing, but that seemed to be mostly because Thor was holding him up by the arm. He stared at her across the amphitheater, his face blank and dull, and then it twisted abruptly.

"Have you not had enough from me?" he said. "Do you want my well-wishes, also?"

"I'm still her," Hela said.

"You were never her," Loki said. "She was but a cloak you put on."

"I wasn't her before," Hela said. "But I wasn't me before, either. I'm not sorry I was born, father. Are you, really?"

Loki stood motionless without speaking, a little while longer, and then he stumbled across the gap between them and put his arms around her. She was as tall as he was, but thinner; somehow she still seemed bigger. He held onto her only for a moment, and then he jerked himself away, his face bitter, and stalked away. Tony shook his head. He was pretty sure Loki wasn't going to get over being forced to birth the cold hard savior of the multiverse. He especially wasn't going to get over loving her. The irony was — and Tony could see it now — Loki hated being played.

Hela turned to Thor, who looked torn; he was following Loki with his eyes, and his face was unhappy. Tony was with him: Loki didn't exactly have a great track record for handling bad feelings in a mature and reasonable way.

"I do bid you fare well, daughter," Thor said softly, turning to her. "Until we meet again: will we do so?"

She said, "I meet everyone, eventually. And then you don't leave."

"That's not at all a creepy way to say bye," Tony said to Bruce, who was still hanging out near him, legs dangling over the edge of the amphitheater, apparently on Tony-watching duty. "Also, uh, hey, where is Natasha? More specifically, where is my _suit?_ "

"She took it to go meet the paramedic team and speed them up," Bruce said. "I don't want you to worry, but I think she might want one."

Tony muttered to himself. Down in the amphitheater, Hela looked at Loki's silent rigid figure one more time, and then Tony blinked a few times; he couldn't seem to focus on her, and then abruptly she just stopped being there at all. Thor went trudging over to Loki and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder, his head bowing towards him. Loki didn't seem to be answering him.

"Yeah," Bruce said. "That's not looking like the best scenario ever."

Tony waved a hand. "No, it's all right. We've got a plan for this."

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. "We do?"

"Sure we do," Tony said. "Like I said. We take Tall, Pointy, and Miserable back to Avengers Tower, and anytime he starts brooding too much, the big green guy gets a story." Bruce's eyebrow remained skeptical; Tony shook his head at him in stern disappointment: ye of little faith. "Never give up on a good plan, Dr. Banner."

Bruce's mouth twitched. "I'll keep that in mind."

"If that doesn't work," Steve said, limping up to sink down on Tony's other side, "I guess there's always Sour Basil Tonics, or whatever those were."

"Saucy Basil Mules," Tony said. "Yes, excellent backup plan."

"Or Thor will, you know, keep him happy," Bruce said.

They all paused for a long moment of not thinking about that at all. "Now _I_ need a Saucy Basil Mule," Tony said. "Someone please change the subject immediately."

Bruce looked back down at the amphitheater. "Speaking of good plans, what did you actually _do_ , down there? What was that — cord?"

Tony indulged himself in a moment of intense smugness. "Let me ask you a question: what's between the square root of negative seven and seventy-three pi?"

"Nothing," Bruce said. "Did Loki use that on you, too?"

"What?" Tony said.

"It's a trick question," Bruce said. "I spent a year trying to work it out, I had to ask Thor. After he finished laughing, he told me Loki made up that question to embarrass one of their teachers. It took the man a few centuries to prove the question made no sense; it's got a few interesting false trails but — "

"Goddammit," Tony said. "You know, I think that bastard got exactly what he deserved." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking it through to the end of this crazy ride! and heaps of thanks to Cesperanza <3
> 
> As always, all feedback loved. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Revelations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/812449) by [ann_ciudad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ann_ciudad/pseuds/ann_ciudad)




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